Editing Canning (section)

==History and development==
{{See also|Mason jar}}
{{More citations needed section|date=June 2021}}

===French origins===
[[File:Boutappertcolljpb.jpg|thumb|upright|A canning jar used by [[Nicolas Appert]]'s canning factory]]

Shortly before the [[Napoleonic Wars]], the French government offered a hefty cash award of 12,000 francs to any inventor who could devise a cheap and effective method of preserving large amounts of food to create well-preserved [[military rations]] for the [[Grande Armée]]. The larger armies of the period required increased and regular supplies of quality food. Limited food availability was among the factors limiting military campaigns to the summer and autumn months. In 1809, [[Nicolas Appert]], a French confectioner and brewer, observed that food cooked inside a jar did not spoil unless the seals leaked, and developed a method of sealing food in glass jars.<ref>{{in lang|fr}} [http://www.appert-aina.com appert-aina.com] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090207171508/http://www.appert-aina.com/ |date=7 February 2009 }}</ref> Appert was awarded the prize in 1810 by Count Montelivert, a French minister of the interior.<ref>''Applied Nutrition and Food Technology'', Jesse D. Dagoon, 1989; p. 2.</ref> The reason for lack of spoilage was unknown at the time, since it would be another 50 years before [[Louis Pasteur]] demonstrated the role of microbes in food spoilage and developed [[pasteurization]].

The Grande Armée began experimenting with issuing canned foods to its soldiers, but the slow process of canning and the even slower development and transport stages prevented the army from shipping large amounts across the [[First French Empire|French Empire]], and the wars ended before the process was perfected.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the canning process was gradually employed in other European countries and the United States.

===In the United Kingdom===
Based on Appert's methods of food preservation, the [[tin can]] process was allegedly developed by Frenchman [[Philippe de Girard]], who came to London and used British merchant [[Peter Durand]] as an agent to patent his own idea in 1810.<ref>{{cite web |last=Geoghegan |first=Tom |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21689069 |title=The story of how the tin can nearly wasn't |work=BBC News |date=2013-04-21 |access-date=2013-06-04 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130606174323/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21689069 |archive-date=6 June 2013}}</ref> Durand did not pursue food canning himself, selling his patent in 1811 to [[Bryan Donkin]] and [[John Hall (engineer)|John Hall]], who were in business as Donkin Hall and Gamble, of [[Bermondsey]].<ref>A brief account of Bryan Donkin FRS and the company he founded 150 years ago. Bryan Donkin Company, Chesterfield, 1953</ref> Bryan Donkin developed the process of packaging food in sealed airtight cans, made of tinned wrought iron. Initially, the canning process was slow and labour-intensive, as each large can had to be hand-made, and took up to six hours to cook, making canned food too expensive for ordinary people.

The main market for the food at this stage was the [[British Army]] and [[Royal Navy]]. By 1817, Donkin recorded that he had sold £3000 (equal to £{{Inflation|UK|3000|1817|fmt=c}} today) worth of canned meat in six months. In 1824, Sir [[William Edward Parry]] took canned beef and pea soup with him on his voyage to the Arctic in [[HMS Fury (1814)|HMS ''Fury'']], during his search for a northwestern passage to India. In 1829, Admiral Sir [[James Clark Ross|James Ross]] also took canned food to the Arctic, as did Sir [[John Franklin]] in 1845.<ref>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</ref> Some of his stores were found by the search expedition led by Captain (later Admiral Sir) [[Francis McClintock|Leopold McClintock]] in 1857.

===In Europe===
[[File:Berthold Weiss Canned Foods.jpg|thumb|The [[Manfred Weiss Works|Berthold-Weiss Factory]], one of the first large canned food factories in [[Csepel]], [[Budapest]] (1885)]]
During the mid-19th century, canned food became a [[status symbol]] among middle-class households in [[Europe]], being something of a frivolous [[novelties|novelty]]. Early methods of manufacture employed poisonous [[lead]] [[solder]] for sealing the cans. Studies in the 1980s attributed the lead from the cans as a factor in the disastrous outcome of the 1845 [[Franklin's lost expedition|Franklin expedition]] to chart and navigate the [[Northwest Passage]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Canned Food Sealed Icemen's Fate |url=https://www.historytoday.com/sheila-rowbotham/canned-food-sealed-icemens-fate |website=History Today}}</ref> However, studies in 2013 and 2016 suggested that lead poisoning was likely not a factor, and that the crew's ill health may, in fact, have been due to malnutrition—specifically zinc deficiency—possibly due to a lack of meat in their diet.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Fingernail absolves lead poisoning in death of Arctic explorer |url=https://www.nature.com/news/fingernail-absolves-lead-poisoning-in-death-of-arctic-explorer-1.21128 |journal=Nature|year=2016 |doi=10.1038/nature.2016.21128 |last1=Witze |first1=Alexandra |s2cid=131781828 |url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Researchers acquit the tins in mysterious failed Franklin expedition |url=https://phys.org/news/2013-04-acquit-tins-mysterious-franklin.html |website=Phys.org}}</ref>

Increasing mechanization of the canning process, coupled with a huge increase in urban populations across Europe, resulted in a rising demand for canned food. A number of inventions and improvements followed, and by the 1860s smaller machine-made steel cans were possible, and the time to cook food in sealed cans had been reduced from around six hours to thirty minutes.

===In the United States===
[[File:Cannery worker filling tuna cans, Los Angeles Cannery Co., Long Beach, Ca. (4951753662).jpg|thumb|A cannery worker filling [[Tuna#Canned|cans of tuna]] in [[Long Beach, California]], United States, {{circa|1930}}]]
Canned food also began to spread beyond Europe—Robert Ayars established the first American canning factory in [[New York City]] in 1812, using improved tin-plated wrought-iron cans for preserving [[oyster]]s, [[meat]]s, [[fruit]]s, and [[vegetable]]s. Demand for canned food greatly increased during wars. Large-scale wars in the nineteenth century, such as the [[Crimean War]], [[American Civil War]], and [[Franco-Prussian War]], introduced increasing numbers of working-class men to canned food, and allowed canning companies to expand their businesses to meet military demands for non-perishable food, enabling companies to manufacture in bulk and sell to wider civilian markets after wars ended. Urban populations in [[Victorian era|Victorian]] [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|Britain]] demanded ever-increasing quantities of cheap, varied, quality food that they could keep at home without having to go shopping daily. In response, companies such as [[William Underwood Company|Underwood]], [[Nestlé]], [[H. J. Heinz Company|Heinz]], and others provided quality canned food for sale to [[working class]] city-dwellers. The late 19th century saw the range of canned food available to urban populations greatly increase, as canners competed with each other using novel foodstuffs, highly decorated printed labels, and lower prices.

===World War I===
During [[World War I]], Military commanders required vast quantities of cheap, high-[[calorie]] [[Field ration|food]] to feed their millions of soldiers. As a result, demand for canned food skyrocketed; canned food could be transported safely, survive [[trench warfare|trench]] conditions, and not spoil in transport. Throughout the war, British soldiers generally subsisted on low-quality canned food, such as the British [[bully beef]], [[pork and beans]], canned sausages, and [[Maconochie|Maconochie's stew]], but by 1916, widespread dissatisfaction and increasing complaints about the poor quality canned food among soldiers resulted in militaries seeking better-quality food to improve morale, and complete meals-in-a-can began to appear. In 1917, the [[French Army]] began issuing canned [[French cuisine]] such as [[coq au vin]], [[beef bourguignon]], [[french onion soup]], and [[Vichyssoise]], while the [[Italian Army]] experimented with canned [[ravioli]], [[Bolognese sauce|spaghetti bolognese]], [[minestrone]], and [[pasta e fagioli]]. Following the war, companies that had supplied canned food to the military, began to improve the quality of their goods for civilian sale.