My name is Evil Longoria and I am Myra and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
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Even you've been wanting to do a canny episode since I been.
Wanting since I did Searching for Spain. When we went to Studias, which is a very tough, rugged, hard land to live on the canning and preservative game, there was like next level. I'm literally like I need to start canning and preserving, and it just was like their pantries are full of like all these preservatives, and I was like.
I want to learn this. Do you can at all? Do I know?
I've never canned in my life. That's a lie. That's a lie because my dad used to when we were young, and I remember like maybe oranges or something.
Peaches, peaches. It was peaches. We canned peaches in those little mason jars. Have you canned before?
I am I the only exciting excited one about this.
No, I'm excited about canning too. I mean I always have canned. I have lots of canned things in my pantry always. But there is my great grandmother's recipe for China's chipotless. It's like in vinegar with and peppercorns and cloves, so that I make. But but but I don't know if it's like the proper canning, like sterilize the cans and all of that.
I just yeah, you just throw it in a mason jar and seal.
It up and seal it up, yeah, and call it a day. But I have made pickles.
Yeah, oh, oh you know what, we made pickles.
You're right.
In Texas, we did pepinos. I mean you would do cucumbers and then yeah, that was a big thing. They never tasted as good as the ones you bought at the baseball stadium.
So I just we never. I was like, this is dumb, But it's so.
Funny because I grew up with canned things, not knowing like, wow, there's a lot of like we would open a can of soup for dinner.
We'd open a can of chili, you know, wolf bran chili.
For dinner. We'd open a can of spinach. I would eat spinach out of a can. Oh really, yes, I loved I still loved spinach this day. But like the Vienna sausages, I grew up on that stuff too. Yes, it's a big part.
Of my life. Loop And now like what do you usually have like witter now your staine.
I don't have a lot of canned stuff. I mean you know what I do always. I always have Chipotlet, canned chilis. I mean at Chipotlet, I'll have kalapennos, I'll those always, Tomato paste and tomato sauce, like that's in my pantry, canned because it goes in everything Mexican. And I have beans, a lot of canned beans. I love cannellini beans. I like northern white beans. I always have canned pinto beans, even though I make fresh pinto beans. I still it's like in case of emergency. Yeah, yeah, what.
Do you add I have been? I have usually have black beans, the white northern beans, garbonzo beans, all garbonzo.
Yeah, Tomato sauces, I have to tuna beans. I always have cantuna.
Yeah.
I don't have anchov rais and sardines or any of that, which in Spain it's a huge thing, huge thing. Canned seafood in Spain is the best in the world. I had canned mussels, I had canned clams, canned oysters, like they can everything fresh out of the water. So it's a big thing in Spain to have canned seafood. And I literally fell in love with it, but only in I love that stuff. Yeah, I grew up.
I grew up with all those canned foods because my grandfather always had the canned oysters and canvas and can that, so I love it. I often have can sardines, little lemon juice and that's my lunch.
Yes, I love that.
You know what made me think about doing this episode was people think the tomato is endemic to Italy, and when I was doing searching for Mexico and they were like, nope, tomatoes endemic to meso America and Mexico. That the reason why Italians are so famous for it is because they were the first to can it.
And then I thought, oh my god, interesting, and.
That kind of sparked this whole like when did this canning thing begin? And I know food preservation has a long history, and like you know, the smoking of meats or the what are you calling not the smoke now smoking?
Like how many batya? What is that?
Salting, salting, curing, curing, salting, Like I always knew that about meats and fish, but I didn't know what about like you know, we had like a tomato or a peach and when things are out of season.
How when did that begin?
Well, the canning specifically, so canning canning kind of emerged in the eighteenth century as the sort of the canning that we're familiar with today. In the eighteenth century armies of revolutionary France, they were setting out to build this empire. So generals were encountering this problem of Okay, what are we going to feed our troops? So they needed food. You can't feed a bunch of troops, you know, fresh
fish or fresh produce. So in seventeen ninety five, the French Directory that was this government during the final years of the French Revolution, they offered a prize of twelve thousand francs, which is the equivalent of about two hundred and forty thousand dollars today for a method of preserving food for military campaigns. So this is when it just sort of started. So it was one in eighteen oh nine, so fourteen years later or fifteen years whatever that math is.
By a man named Nicholas aper Of. He experimented for all of this time and part of his win was to write a book on this process.
So a French dude, a French dude. He was from Champagne, the region of Champagne. Oh my gosh, Jane.
Yeah, so this guy, he didn't have a formal education, but he was the son of an innkeeper and he was interested in food, and he learned how to brew beer. He learned how to pick all from his father. And then he moved to Paris in seventeen eighty and he became a popular confectioner, been a confessionary slash grocery store, and he was very vocal against the monarchy. He donated to the.
Revolutionary seventeen eighty who wasn't in France.
Yeah, most people were like yeah, except for unless you were the one percent, right, but most people were yeah. So in the seventeen nineties, he around the time that this prize kind of emerged, he began selling fresh produce in his grocery store. So this led to his interest in food preservation. You're selling produce, it's not selling, so this led to his interest.
He wasn't like a scientist, he was just a dude that had a grocery store and ended up like winning this prize on preserving food and then documented it in this book.
Yeah. Yeah, he wasn't a scientist. Although scientists had been studying and writing about this sort of micro organisms and food, but nobody really understood you know, the science of it, right, And so he wrote that book. It was called The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for several years. I love that that's the title.
It sounds so today, like the art of like all kinds of like animal and vegetable.
Substances for several years. That's a funny t it's like keeps going on. And so this book was translated into English and it was sold in England and it was sold in the US. And he describes, you know, different processes for different foods. But I love that.
I love that he used the money, this prize money to open up a canning factory. And he was the one in eighteen twelve that switched to these tin plated cans basically what we used today.
It's kind of what we used today. But the original tin plated cans were iron cans, so that they have led.
So this was a problem, a little bit of a little bit.
Of a problem, a slight problem that there was lead in your in your can. But this guy was amazing. He also developed bouoleon cubes.
Bon like chicken and beef bouyon.
Yeah, he wasn't a scientist, but he developed all of these you know things, and so and what happened to him, Well, he just he spent so much money on his experiments. So he died in poverty at age.
What he didn't die a ga billionaire.
He didn't die. He wasn't a good businessman. You know, his equipment all of this was high. But he never he died not really fully understanding how like why his method worked. And he was ninety one though, so he lived a long long life and so, oh my god, all of his inventions were improved by modern devices.
Well, I love I love that canning made the global food supply, you know, more accessible to like different parts of the world, like now you can have a Chipotle Chile if you live in India, right or whatever. And also how it made foods available outside of season and if you canned it, And so I really I feel like canning is so important because for farming. To farm outside of season really screws up the soil and all of that stuff, and so too like nope, you know,
peach season is over. We're now moving on to this. But you know we have a storage of that stuff. So interesting that this dude is the one that really created so much of what we use today.
Yeah, it's incredible to know that there are just people that are that are devoting their lives to improving the lives of others just by by preserving, which is something that's you know, has been around since prehistoric times. Like you said, salting and fermenting and all of this, but canning was just a whole other level.
Well, when we come back, we're going to get into when cannon came to the United States and also where the word mason jar comes from.
I'm excited about this.
Okay, So now we're in the United States because this all happened in France and Europe and now in the United States. At French revolutions happened, American revolutions happened.
We are now where are we We're in Pennsylvania. It's eighteen forty seven. We're in Pennsylvania and tomatoes. You talked about tomatoes native to meso America. At the time, tomatoes weren't fully accepted in the English speaking world, right, but there was a market. Yeah. They didn't like them, right, No, they were well, they were part of the night shade. They thought that maybe they were poisonous, so they didn't
like them. They really like them. They thought they were poisonous. Yeah, So there was a marketing campaign by a canner in eighteen forty seven that sent samples to President and Poke, the US president, and to Queen Victoria, and they became a popular food, A common and popular food based on canning in Pennsylvania, So that I think is really cool. And then the first popular can product was condensed milk
in eighteen fifty eight. It was in high demand by the Union army during the Civil War, and a parent in France had experimented with condensed milk before for the French government. My favorite thing, one of my favorite things in the world, is condensed milk.
I know, I'm not a fan.
Oh, it's just I know it's pure sugar.
I just don't It's like, because you like flaun I associate it with flun Yes, I find this weird that people didn't know why canning worked, and then sometimes like the cans would like.
Explode and the food would spoil.
So like when did like these air tight containers work?
And then when did like killed the microorganisms?
And like all of.
This feels like a job somebody figured out totally.
It was a lot of trial and error, like I'm sure, and then iron, you know, cans have iron. So the someone that figured this out was Louis Pasteur in eighteen
sixty four. So he eventually established this link between microbial contamination and spoilage, right, And there were earlier scientists that were experimenting with this process, right, but he was the one that really figured out that there was yeast involved in fermentation and discovered that bacteria were contaminating the process and this led to the development of pasteurization.
Now I know that, like this is all fascinating, but it feels like home canning is what took off, like people at home, not this industrial like not an industrial market for it, but it feels like.
Where this took off was in the home.
And in eighteen fifty eight, John Mason of Philadelphia patent did the.
First Mason jar and it was made from this.
Heavyweight glass that could withstand high temperatures during the canning process, and his patent expired in eighteen seventy nine, but manufacturers like who did similar jars just continue to use his name. And that's why even today we say the Mason jar because of this dude and then did it and then
during wartime right Inania. And I could see where this came in handy during during American wartime, because when you're serving in the military and they're rationing food and there's this like pressure to feed all of these people, it felt like, you know, canning was the answer. And so then artists were called on to make canning seemed patriotic with slogans like.
Can all you can and of course you can.
Is so funny, but that makes sense.
I mean, how do you feed that many people fresh every day? You know?
Yeah? But yeah, this is exactly what we said. This is when kind of home canning took off.
I feel like we can't talk about canning without talking about spam.
Do you have do you have a history with spam? I still love it as a kid, I love it. Do you have it now? Where did it come from?
No?
I don't have it now?
Isn't it isn't it. Well, it's like it's salt. It has so much salt, right, but in nights.
Yeah, that's probably why I liked it when it was little.
When I was little, we always it was a meal. It was a meal. I was like if I had a can of spam, it was like it was the best thing in the world. Now it's like going, now I think about the textures like, oh, but oh my gosh, but.
That gelatin that comes out with it so gross.
I know. Well, it's that spam only has seven ingredients back when it was developed, and now to today it has pork shoulders, hamahawk, salt water, a modified corn starts that serves as a binder, and study of nitrate as a preservative. But that's it. That's it.
But still to this day, it all this.
Day, it only has that.
But where why was it? Was it amended for them.
During the Great Depression, But it wasn't specifically. So when you mentioned, you know, the artist in this sort of sort of marketing campaign can all you can and all of that. So pork producers they weren't selling pork shoulder, which is a huge cut of meat, and they were like, right, I love I love it too, but they they weren't selling it, so they made a deal with Hormeal Foods to sell them, you know, the pork shoulder, and so they came up with spam and it corresponded with the
Great Depression. So nineteen thirty seven is when Hormel Foods introduced spam, and it gave people a meat product during the Depression that they could have. It had a long shelf life, and then during the Second World War it was fed to soldiers. So in the First World War there were there was already canned foods, but they were kind of mystery meats, and at least with this, they knew what it was. Mystery meds, you know, they knew what they were. Funny.
Well, well, look, I think it's still popular today all over the globe.
After the war, even though soldiers had a love hate relationship with it, it made its way around the world. By nineteen forty five, it was all over the world. It's super popular. And like Hawaii and yeah, Hawaii, uh yeah, there is a spam museum in Minnesota. I want to go, we go, I want to go. I want to go to the spam museum, and I want to visit you know where princes farm.
When did ganning arrive to Mexico, Because it feels like we were late to the game.
So canning as a business in Latin America emerged under the Portfitiato, so after eighteen seventy six, So this is so. Yes, Mexico was late to the game. But they were importing a lot of canned goods from Europe. So if you mentioned all of those wonderful canned foods that you had in Spain, so a lot of those goods were entering Mexico from Spain, from France, or just decades after independence from Spain. Conservative Mexicans and wealthy expats they longed for
the days of the European monarchy. So eventually man named Porfirio. Yes, he was a mesdiso from Wajaca. He loved everything France, everything French. Oh did he I didn't know that. He was a huge Francophile, and so he gained power and he ruled from eighteen seventy six to nineteen ten. But he embraced this notion that Mays had oppressed pre Columbian people and that salvation lay in the adoption of europe culture. So this was so, this French cuisine became very fashionable
among urban Mexicans. So we see specialty shops in Mexico City and other major cities selling these gourmet pats and all of these can goods imported from Europe. And so what he did was he expanded foreign investments to Mexico and to help modernize the country. So this allowed businesses to prosper. Of course, the common people suffered because of rising food costs, and so this eventually led to the
Mexican Revolution. But France played an important part in the industrialization of Mexico, and so by nineteen ten, the year of the revolution broke out, fifty five percent of foreign investment in Mexican industry was French.
You know, when I was doing searching for Mexico, we went to Veracruz and we went to Halapa, and they said this was the first place to can Chile. And that's why it's called Halapennos. Halapennos. Yeah, because it was in the city of Halapa. It's not that the Chile is called Alapenno. It was just the place where they can this particular Chile cal Halapa. Now it's Allebeno. But I'm wondering is this the dude? This Don clemented Jacques, French businessman Jacques.
Yeah, he was importing can goods from Europe and he established the first canning factory in eighteen eighty seven, so the first kind of large scale canning factory. And he also had an ammunition business. This is so random. He printed ads invitations, party favors, and he's responsible for the Loteria game. What Yeah, so the Loteria game has a history that goes, you know, way way way back to Europe. But the images on the late game he is responsible for.
So isn't that interesting? But he was French, he was French, he was I remember those ads is when I was a kid, Clement dejac Clement dejac, I remember the commercials when I was a kid. He was a pioneer in the canning industry. He was the first person to have a canning business in Latin America. So he started with the klapennos in escavech, and then he moved on to
canned fruit, to jam salsaz petis, you know, tuna. But this idea of escavech is the Spanish term for pickling, for pickling, and it's this preservation process brought to Spain by the Moors, and then the Spanish brought this process to America where we start seeing calleween calapennios and escavech piggled klapenno's and they're a key in every kitchen. I have a huge topperware in my refrigerator always with kilapennos, and they vary right brand from brand to brand. They they really the flavors.
They really do. There are certain ones that I like more than others. Me.
Toolapenos are not canna a cannon jarred halapenos are not created equal.
No, not at all. Even can canta canjlapenos.
So after the break, we're talking about all things pickling, my favorite, one of my favorite, my other favorite things don't go anywhere.
Do you love pickles?
Do I love pickles?
That's an understatement And it's so funny because Pepa hates pickles and he hates the smell. Like if I eat a pickle, He's like, did you eat a pickle? And it could be like three days later because I love vinegar and salt and oh, like my mouth is watering just talking about it.
But I know.
And so in Texas, pickles were a big part of our our diet.
If you went to a baseball game, you would have pickles.
If you went to a carnival, they were pickles, and we had that big, those big, and then we had spicy pickles that were like in a more spicy sauce. And I would have pickle with sour cumin onion chips. So you eat the chip and the pickle and the chip in the pick like this bag and for the bag and war and it's I mean, I reckon. I highly recommend this snack that actually sounds so good. Oh my god, SA sour cumin onion with a pickle, I just I can't even so wait, there's two basic categories
of pickles. One is preserved in vinegar and a and a strong acid which which few bacteria can survive. And then the other pickles are soaked in a salt brine to encourage fermentation and the growth of good bacteria and like like kimchi and saurkraut like like that kind of thing.
So what are we eating today?
I think it's the preserve the pickles preserved in vinegar. I think that that's what you're talking about. And that's what I love and I can I can drink that stuff.
I could drink pickle do I would rather have a martini with pickle juice than olive juice.
Oh my god, I've never had that. We should make it. We should make it. Oh my god, that sounds amazing. Sometimes when I do like canned tona, I always have pickles in my fridge. Yeah, but I think I think I'm going to have this for lunch today. Canned tuna. I usually I put lots of like lemon juice or lime juice, but sometimes I put pickle juice in the cases.
Yes, yeah, well mustard, I also put pickles.
I put pickles in my potato salad. Do you put pickles in your potato salad?
I don't eat potato salad.
Gosh, because of the male.
I can make you a very mustardy, strong potato salad if you would.
Just eat it for pickles.
I will, I will, I will. I could do that. I could do that, but I feel it.
It was during the Great Depression when people started pickling things.
No, yeah, yeah, so it was like the canning was more kind of First World War, and then pickling families, you know, really started pickling and kept pam families from starving. But this process of pickling is something that's been around forever. Archaeologists believe that ancient Mesopotamians pickled food as far back as twenty four hundred BC. Wow, and sauer kraut, which is a kind of fermented cabbage over two thousand years ago workers building the Great Wall of China.
So there's a yeah, so this fermenting pickling thing has been around for a minute. There's a fun fact about the first can opener was invented in the US by Ezra J. Wayner in eighteen fifty eight. But prior to the can opener, cans would just be opened with a chisel and hammer.
So the army used.
The can openers in the Civil Wars it was like eighteen fifty eight, but they weren't a big hit with the public, and so the grocery stores would open the cans for the customers to take home. What.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
I like that idea, like, could you open all my cans?
I never thing you have to eat them?
The purpose is the point having pantry you.
Have all these open cans. Yeah yeah, yeah, but yeah, it's like one of those things that you never you don't really think about it's like, oh yeah, if you have a can you need a can opener. And when you look at the can opener, it's kind of a cool thing and has the little wheel that it's it's a cool invention. So let's check. Let's give some some fun pickle facts. Okay. Cleopatrick credited her health and legendary beauty to a hearty diet of pickles. Up.
See maybe that's where you go. Where I get.
My beauty, my skin from is my love for pickles.
And another fun fact.
Shakespeare not only made a lot of references to pickles in his plays, but he also introduced the use of the word pickle as a metaphor. In Hamlet, he wrote, Oh, Hamlet, how chemist thou in such a pickle, introducing a new idiom which if you guys remember Sandlot, like I iconic film, they're like, they use that word pickle. We've gotten such a pickle, you know, which means you're in a bad situation.
That was Shakespeare, guys, that was Shakespeare.
Shakespeare.
Well, look, thank you for allowing me, thank you for entertaining my love for canning and allowing.
Us to do an episode about it.
I'm so happy that we did it. I think this is.
So fascinating, and I think I want to ask our listeners to share their favorite canned food dishes that they have. I don't know if it's in your weekly dinner rotation or like a special occasion like Easter.
I don't know.
We'd love to hear from y'all you know about your canned food dishes.
And while you're at it, please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. See you next week.
Thanks for listening, Thanks for listening.
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