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Summary
Summary
From primitive drying and salting techniques to advancements in food preservation that have allowed us to send humans into space, Pickled, Potted, and Canned offers insight into the history, culture, and ingenuity of people struggling to feed themselves and cheat the seasons. 35 illustrations.
Author Notes
Sue Shephard has spent most of her career working in television in England, where she was responsible for creating, among other programs, three series about food and culture with Dorinda Hafner. Pickled, Potted, and Canned was nominated for the 2001 IACP Jane Grigson Award, which recognizes scholarship in food writing. Shephard lives in the southwest of England with her husband and two grown children
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-This fact-filled chronicle of the development of food preservation delves into the historical context as well as the various procedures used for such ancient methods as salting, drying, smoking, and fermenting. Modern techniques like freezing and dehydration are also discussed. The development of each process is followed from its earliest time. Most innovations were born out of the necessity to keep an abundant harvest of food preserved during the winter or for long voyages. In turn new techniques empowered humans to undertake impossibly long journeys to map out trade routes, conquer distant lands, discover new continents, and eventually explore outer space. One especially interesting chapter tells of a late-18th-century race between the English and French to find a better way to preserve food and retain its flavor, nutrients, and palatability. The hero of this adventure about the process of canning was a French cook with an understanding of chemistry and a flair for business. His story is exciting and action-filled enough to be a book unto itself. This work is an excellent source for information about a small but important slice of history.-Penny Stevens, Andover College, Portland, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Before the advent of chemically preserved foods, people relied on ingenious natural preserving methods to survive winters. Shephard (coauthor, United Tastes of America), the creator of several food television programs in England, chronicles the history of food preservation in detail, from salt-cured pork, fermented soybeans (an Asian staple), fish buried in sand (in Africa and Northern Europe) and wines made from rice, to Bird's Eye dinners and freeze-dried astronaut food. Shephard argues that food preservation has been integral to human progress, allowing us to advance from subsistence hunter-gatherers to explorers and traders who can travel the globe and even outer space. While her focus is food, other interesting tidbits emerge: in 1800, archeologists found and consumed a jar of honey in Egypt, then discovered the body of a small baby preserved inside. (In fact, from the Neolithic era onward, Aryans, Sumerians, Babylonians and Cretans often buried their dead in honey.) One of the book's strongest sections covers explorations. The preservation of food was vital to early explorers like Marco Polo, who needed supplies to last through long, arduous journeys. (On one American Northwest expedition in 1801, Lewis and Clark brought "193 pounds of portable soup, twenty barrels of flour, fourteen barrels of parched corn, forty-two barrels of salt pork, two hundred pounds of beef tallow, and fifty pounds of pig lard stored in whisky barrels.") Shephard's straightforward tone and accessible scholarship make for a thorough and intriguing history. B&w photos and illus. Agent, Jane Turnbull. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A rich compendium of history and lore tracing the evolution of food preservation. Part popular history, part travel narrative, Shephard's study explores the interesting question of how innovations in food preparation and preservation shaped civilization's growth. Most of the chapters tackle preservative methods such as drying, salting, canning, and freezing, and highlight formative moments in their implementation. Shephard, who created several food programs for British television, presents chemical processes in layman's terms while offering copious historical anecdotes designed to illustrate the importance of diet or food preservation as well as to engage a diverse readership. Those who assume Germany to be the originator of sauerkraut, for example, are quickly informed that builders of the Great Wall were fed on a diet of sauerkraut fermented in wine in sixth-century China. Similarly, in the chapter on salting we learn how Attila and the Huns sustained themselves by placing fresh cuts of meat beneath their saddles. As they rode, the combination of the horse's sweat and the action of the rider pummeling the saddle removed the meat's liquids, producing a nicely tenderized and preserved hunk of what Shephard calls "gallop-cured meat." Perhaps just as impressive is the 19th-century tale of John Ross and the crew of the Victory, who survived for four and a half years in the Arctic on a store of tinned meat and vegetables, briefly supplemented by the Inuit diet of fox, salmon, and seal blubber. While the author succeeds in the daunting task of noting food types and preserving trends from around the globe, her British perspective occasionally skews the text; this is most noticeable in the virtual omission of France from a chapter on milk products and in the striking amount of space devoted to the creation of marmalade. A convincing argument and an appetizing look at a rarely discussed topic.
Booklist Review
There is evidence, the author tells us in this vastly entertaining and enlightening book, that Egyptian tribespeople were drying fish and poultry in the desert sun. This may not sound so remarkable, but consider this: they were doing it about 14,000 years ago. The techniques of food preservation are not new. Shephard, who has produced several series about food for British television, opens the book with the story of some archaeologists who opened a millenniaold Egyptian jar of honey, found it tasted splendid, and dove right in--until they found the jar contained a perfectly preserved human baby. Who would have thought the history of food preservation could be so immensely educational? Nearly every page contains something either practical or historically fascinating or both: how to dry, salt, smoke, ferment, pickle, and cure food; how the discovery of food preservation led to the discovery of the world; how ketchup, much maligned by some highfalutin' food writers, began as a dipping sauce, a way to use the juice in which fish and vegetables were preserved ("waste not, want not" was for many generations the watchword of food preservation). Fans of such foodie lit classics as Margaret Visser's The Rituals of Dinner or anything by M. F. K. Fisher will quickly add this volume to their short list of favorites. But the book is so lively and informative that even those readers who think they have no interest whatsoever in the subject will find themselves changing their minds in a hurry. --David Pitt
Library Journal Review
Written in a lively style by a creator of several British television food programs, this book recounts the development of food preserving from the time of the ancients to the era of the space program, from East to West and all points in between. The 16 chapters individually treat each technology, e.g., drying, salting, pickling in vinegar, smoking, fermenting, canning, refrigerating and freezing, and dehydration. Well-documented facts come alive with anecdotal support and the sense that the author truly cares about the ingenious way that humanity has preserved itself by preserving its food. Ultimately, one indeed understands that humankind's wanderings would have been impossible without the science of food preserving and its ability to improve flavor. While there are no recipes, the bibliography supplies a superb reading list for picklers, potters, and canners. Culinary history continues to be popular reading, which is just one reason to purchase this fine book. Highly recommended for public, academic, and special libraries. Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. 7 |
| Preface: The Longest Journey | p. 11 |
| Introduction: Shelf Life | p. 15 |
| 1. Drying | p. 28 |
| 2. Salting | p. 62 |
| 3. Pickling in Vinegar | p. 95 |
| 4. Smoking | p. 108 |
| 5. Fermenting | p. 124 |
| 6. Milk Products | p. 142 |
| 7. Sugar | p. 163 |
| 8. Concentrates | p. 175 |
| 9. Pies, Pots, and Bottles | p. 185 |
| 10. Navy Blues | p. 200 |
| 11. From Cooks to Chemists | p. 213 |
| 12. Canning | p. 226 |
| 13. Great Journeys | p. 256 |
| 14. Refrigeration and Freezing | p. 280 |
| 15. Dehydration and Beyond | p. 311 |
| 16. Feast or Famine | p. 325 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 346 |
| Index | p. 355 |
| Picture Credits | p. 366 |
