HEAVEN PRESERVE US !

TODAY,WE LIVE BY CONVENIENCE FOODS AND SELL-BY DATES. BUT OUR PREDECESSORS WERE FORCED TO DEVISE  INGENIOUS TRICKS TO KEEP FOOD FRESH. THE HISTORY OF MAN'S ATTEMPT TO PRESERVE FOOD IS LITTERED WITH OCCASIONAL SUCCESSES --AND A HOST OF FOUL-TASTING DISASTERS.  HERE ARE SOME FASCINATING FACTS FROM A NEW BOOK ABOUT HOW WE PRESERVED OUR FOOD.

1.  SALTING was the only way meat could be preserved in medieval Britain. Large fine crystals of sea salt from Maldon in Essex were known as corn --hence the name corned beef. 2.  Gunpowder rubbed into meat preserves it even better than salt does. 3.  THE  Huns who invaded Rome under Attila had no salt so they put thin slices of raw meat under their saddles. As they galloped, their weight pressed juices out of the meat, and sweat from the horse's back was absorbed into it. When they stopped  they had gallop-cured, sweat-salted meat, ready for eating. 4.  FRANCIS BACON died in 1626 of a cold caught while he was stuffing a chicken with snow. Frozen food was not tried again in Britain for 200 years. 5.  THE eccentric Oxford don, William Buckland, served his dinner guests meat in 1799 from a mammoth found frozen in Siberia. It had been dead  at least 12,000 years ; and was probably the first major frozen meal eaten in Britain.

6.  CLARENCE BIRDSEYE, who popularised frozen foods by developing quick freezing, spent three years as a fur trapper in a shack in Arctic northern Canada . An obsessive experimenter, his wife had to put up with frozen cabbages in the laundry tub and frozen fish in the bath. 7.  IN 1800, archaeologists found a large jar of honey in the tomb of an Egyptian  pharaoh. They opened it, and found that it tasted perfect, even though it was thousands of years old. 8.  ORANGES  preserved in salt in China are  considered good for hangovers . Pickling  is  particularly popular in Japan, where they pickle slugs in in fermenting rice bran. 9.  HONEY preserves food --and bodies . Alexander the Great was embalmed  in honey after he died in Babylon in 323 B.C. 10.  GRAVADLAX, now considered a luxury, was a Scandinavian peasant method of preserving fish --simply by burying it  for a few months. The name means graveyard salmon ; it was half-putrid when dug up.

11.  THERE are more  than 180 different kinds of pickled cabbage in Korea --buried underground for at least six months until well fermented. 12.  YOGHURT, long-known in the Balkans, was first brought to Western  Europe on the hoof, in the form of a flock of sheep made to walk all the way from Constantinople to Paris in the 16th Century. There, their milk was turned into yoghurt as a medicine for the sick  King Francois I. The sheep died of exhaustion ; the  king  recovered. 13.  DRIED  milk was invented by Bedouin Arabs, who would carry it in the form of  hard cakes that would keep for two years or more before being reconstituted. 14.  MARMALADE  became popular only after a sinking ship carrying  Seville  oranges struggled into Dundee in1797. Local grocer James Keiller bought the cargo cheap ; only to be told by his wife, Janet, that the oranges  were bitter, inedible --and unsaleable. She rescued her husband's reputation and established the family fortune by boiling down the oranges into bitter jam. There were too many  to cut finely ; so proper Dundee  marmalade, as preferred by gourmets, is coarse-cut and contains large chunks of peel. 15.  IN 1980, a  tin of  Frank  Cooper's Oxford Marmalade was recovered from  Captain Scott's cabin in the Antarctic. It dated from 1912 and was still in perfect condition.

16.  CAPTAIN COOK  took experimental 'portable soup' meat extract --a forerunner of Bovril --on his three-year voyage around the world in 1772. It was made by boiling putrescent meat until  it reached the consistency of glue ; some sailors refused to eat it , and were flogged. 17.  SHIPS biscuits in Nelson's day were commonly infested with weevils and maggots. They were sometimes reheated on board to cook the insects thoroughly inside and provide extra protein. The weevils were said to taste bitter ; maggots were  spongy and tasted 'cold'. 18.  THE modern canning process was invented by a Frenchman, Nicholas Appert, during the Napoleonic Wars as a means of keeping the French sailors well-fed. He may well have secretly sold the idea to the British as well, because our navy took it up while the French did not. 19.  THE first tinned foods were being mass produced by 1812, although the first tin-opener was not invented  until 1860. Until then , a hammer and chisel were required. 20.  EARLY canning  processes were dangerous and tins frequently burst. One unfortunate canning-worker in 1830s  Southampton was killed by an exploding tinned turkey.

21.  TINNED baked beans, a national favourite, were introduced to Britain only in 1928. However in the 17th Century, George III, on seeing workmen tucking into plates of (non-tinned) beans, decided to try some, and was so impressed he decreed there should be an annual 'bean-feast'. 22.  MEDIEVAL Persians manufactured ice in their deserts. They channelled cold night  winds over shallow troughs of water , and built long walls to give permanent shade to the resulting thin skin of ice. This was then used for cold drinks. 23.  METHODS  to freeze fish were invented by the Chinese in the 15th Century. Fishing boats carried ice to keep their catch from rotting. The idea only reached Britain in 1843. 24.  FREEZE-DRIED coffee powder reached Britain in the sixties ; but freeze-drying had been around in Peru since the 14th Century. For more than 6oo years, Peruvians have dipped their potatoes in water before exposing them to the cold mountain night air. In the morning they jump on the crisply frozen tubers --sometimes barefoot. The end result is a freeze-dried potato flour. 25.  DURING  World War I,  the American government classified ice-cream as an 'essential foodstuff', indispensable to the morale of the U.S. army.

26.  SPAM  reached Britain to help ease the shortages and rationing of World War II. The name comes from the initials of Supply Pressed American Meat. 27.  ASTRONAUTS have been fed on bite-sized chunks of freeze-dried food coated with gelatine to reduce crumbs that would fly around the cockpit ; semi-liquid mush  squeezed into their mouths from tubes ; and plastic bags of dried food which were rehydrated with cold water. Not until the later series of Apollo flights was there the luxury  of hot water and hot food on board. 28.  WHEN 'artificial' ice made in freezer plants was introduced in the 1860s, some American  Puritans boycotted it, believing it interfered with nature and was an insult to God's prerogative. 29.  PICKLE was so important to the Lithuanians they worshipped a god of pickled food. 30.  IN a letter to The Times in 1887, an Archdeacon Denison claimed to have kept a piece of  Cheddar cheese under glass on his hall table for 41 years. It was, he said, 'still sweet'.

PICKLED, POTTED AND CANNED (The Story Of Food Preserving) by Sue Shepard                                 Published by Headline at  £14.99                       This review was written by JULIAN CHAMPKIN