Food Preservation: Yesterday and Today

History, en-laced with many wars, revolutions, and power struggles, has steered the human race towards development. During periods of critical times the most life changing inventions have been created that affect lives even today. Some of these have a major impact that is taken advantage of and looked over, such as the canning process. There has been much advancement in technology and new inventions as the world has advanced, but without the invention of the canning process, many inventors and discoverers may not have been alive to accomplish their great feats.

Preservation was not just inspired by food but also in conserving the human body this process called mummification. The body would be taken and removed of all moisture meaning all organs were removed as well, except for the heart as it was thought to be the soul. They dried the body with natron, a type of salt, and then began to wrap the body with hundreds of yards of linen. This process took seventy days to complete because retaining the normal figure of the body was an extremely important matter to them, as they believed the body was the soul’s home. This process can be compared to how food was preserved and may have inspired the act in doing so ("Egyptian mummies").

Preserving foods was not exactly an easy process. Salt preserving, like mummification, was one method used, though not very often as salt was expensive and not easy to obtain. However, when provided the opportunity to gather salt, the meat or fish would be dry-salted, buried in granular salt, or brine-cured, soaked in strong salt water. Another process that was mostly used in Europe was preserving by drying, which was mostly used on fish. They place the food in the dry cool air until it was d...

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