Amazon.com Review
We're apt to ignore the importance of food preservation, but its significance can't be overestimated. In Pickled, Potted, and Canned, Sue Shephard tells the fascinating and unexpectedly stirring story of the development of preserved, portable food--a history full of human ingenuity and mastery that limns our evolution from hunter-gathers, dependent upon food availability for sustenance, to "season cheaters" able to take nourishment when and where we wanted to and thus discover the world. Food preservation's history is the story of civilization itself, and in lively prose readers discover the way the world was shaped by such common yet extraordinary techniques as drying, salting, smoking, and, most recently, canning and freezing. In 1800, Shepard writes, archaeologists working in Egypt discovered the body of a baby perfectly preserved in millennia-old honey, a practice stretching back in time and employed by the embalmers of Alexander the Great, also buried in honey. Sugar preservation, we are reminded, is one of the major techniques of food keeping--mixed with fruit, sugar produces jams, preserves, candied fruit, and other time-defying food--and Shepard traces its history from ancient Greece to the present. Similarly, she explores other techniques including salting, responsible for keeping meat and fish like cod palatable and at the ready; fermenting, to which we owe soy sauce and other mainstays; and drying, which gave us pasta and "ever-fresh" breads such as hardtack and matzo. From ancient but ever-evolving preservation methods like these to modern dehydration, which helps produce food that sustains astronauts, the book details simultaneously world-changing skills and culture in the making. --Arthur Boehm
Product Description
We may not give much thought to the boxes in our freezers or the cans on our shelves, but behind the story of food preservation is the history of civilization itself. The ability to preserve food was the key that liberated humans from the anxious life of the hunter-gatherer, forced to follow migrating herds or to forage for seasonal berries and leaves. The development of portable, preserved food enabled the great explorers to travel into the unknown and gradually map the planet, facilitated the conquest of new territories by great armies and navies, and created routes for the expansion of trade and the exchange of knowledge and culture that opened up our world. It allowed us to expand our daily menu from the limited repetitious range of our ancestors to the multicultural, international choices we enjoy today. In Pickled, Potted, and Canned, Sue Shephard weaves together the stories of the inventors and key developments of food preservation in a lively and richly detailed narrative that spans centuries and continents, a fascinating blend of social history, popular science, and man's ongoing curiosity and inventiveness. It is a tale filled with extraordinary characters, old legends, and new revelations. It describes how Attila the Hun and his men "gallop cured" their meat, how cooks became chemists and chemists became cooks, how men made or lost fortunes, and how some even lost their lives -- like seventeenth-century statesman and philosopher Francis Bacon, whose death was caused by an experiment with a frozen chicken, or the worker in an early canning factory, killed "most ridiculously and ignobly" by an exploding tin of turkey. From the primitive techniques of drying and salting to the latest methods that have allowed us to feed men in space, Picked, Potted, and Canned gives us insight into the histories, cultures, and ingenuity of people inventing new ways to "cheat the seasons."
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Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World
- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 2001-08-28
- Label: Simon & Schuster
- Studio: Simon & Schuster
- ISBN: 0743216334
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 6 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #1065314
Avg. Customer Review:
2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: I Am Pickled, Potted, and Sitting On My Can 2005-02-26
Comment: I am presently qworking on preserving myself with a case of Bully Porter I brought back from a business trip to Kansas Ciuty. It will Not, repeat, NOT make me disappear. In fact, it will likely make me grow into an even bigger menace. Maybe I will become Ripper Nips. This book made me hungry, which is not unusual. It does a great job describing 19th CEntury bottling techniques. Dipper has a fine example of a Wells, Miller & Provost bottlee from the 1850s. If this review was helpful (and I am sure it is), please hit (gently) 'YES' now..,.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Much information, but no attribution 2004-10-15
Comment: Decent information on the different methods of preserving foods throughout history. The main problem I have, however, is the lack of footnotes -- Shephard cites many interesting anecdotes. Unfortunately, many of these cry out "urban myth" to me. An example:
"Louis XIII of France loved [dried mushrooms'] woodland scent so much that he lay on his deathbed in 1643 threading mushrooms onto strings for drying."
A good story, yes. Actual historical fact? It seems unlikely, and without documentation I can't judge the source material.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent illuminating history of food preservation. 2003-05-10
Comment: In this concise yet detailed history of man's attempts to provide food for times of need, Ms.Shephard describes all the usual, and some very unusual methods of preserving food.In chapters devoted to each particular method, she details how, by trial and error and by observation, people have discovered ways of extending the life of foodstuffs well past the natural sell-by date. This leads to the means by which explorers could subsist independently of the land or sea they were travelling in, thus expanding the boundaries of trade and colonisation. However, some of the preserving methods brought their attendant disadvantages, such as vitamin deficiencies, like scurvy or pellagra - the ways of combating these are also dealt with in the book. Ms.Shephard writes in a comfortable, informative style that is neither dumbing-down, nor patronising, but with clear, logical progression within the particular subject - with the occasional illuminating aside to spice things up. Drawing heavily on historical accounts, she has meticulously researched the subject and presented us with a fine addition to any amateur historian's library.
A very worthwhile read *****
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Poor writing - boring read 2002-10-25
Comment: "Pickled, Potted and Canned" is just not very interesting. It's basically just a compendium of ways that food is preserved, written in a fairly uninteresting way. It seems to just go on and on without any story or purpose. Let me make a comparison to "Cod" by Kurlansky. "Cod" tells the story of the New England fishing fleet and how preserved cod affected trade and the growth of US maritime strength. "Cod" has a unifying theme which holds the reader's interest.
There's no story, theme, or technical depth to "Pickled, Potted and Canned". Within each section, it just repeats over and over the fact that certain foods were preserved with the subject of the section (drying, salt, sugar, etc.). It doesn't discuss how the preserving material works to preserve the food, or how preserving fits into the flow of world history. If you're interested in how preserving works, get "On Food and Cooking" by McGee. It's not focused on preserving but you'll get more than in "Pickled, Potted and Canned". If you're interested in how the development of food preservation affected world history, I don't know what to recommend to you. Maybe another reviewer can make a suggestion.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Food preserving changed the course of civilization 2002-03-25
Comment: Food preserving changed the course of civilization by making it possible to travel, explore, and survive. Pickled, Potted and Canned reveals the history of food preserving techniques, exploring how early preservation techniques changed history, cultures, and modern ideas of food and eating. From milk products to sugar and pickling, this examines how preservation techniques were fostered.
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Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World
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