“Physics and chemistry have been called to the aid of alimentary art: leading scholars have not felt it beneath their dignity to study our basic needs, and as a result, there are improvements in everything from the simple pot-au-feu of a working man to the most extraordinarily complex and delicate foodstuffs ever to be served from gold and crystal. […] The art of preserving foods has also become a skill in itself, whose purpose is to offer us at any season of the year, those aliments which are peculiar to a single one.“
Brillat-Savarin, La Physiologie du goût, Méditation XXVII, 1825 (Translation M.F.K. Fisher)
Brillat-Savarin was an illustrious gastronomist, and if he devotes attention to the sciences in his famous Physiology of Taste, it is because, during the early 19thcentury the topic was revolutionising cooking. Chemists rushed to discover ways of facilitating daily life in France, encouraged by the many prizes initiated by successive governments, eager to improve the wellbeing of the populace as well as that of their armies.
The ancestor of the tinned preserve described in the quotation above was invented by Nicolas Appert. As the son of an innkeeper, he quickly realised the need to work on a means of preserving foodstuffs that would make them easier to store and transport. After becoming a confectioner, he continued his investigations with success. It is to him that we owe appertisation (which consists of heat-sterilising perishable foodstuffs in sealed containers), as well as the bouillon cube and condensed milk. All useful inventions, which he promptly set out to share with households all over the country. The most effective advertising at the time was through publications. For an invention to gain traction, it was necessary to publish books, tracts, brochures, articles and almanacs; even in a country whose population remained largely illiterate, printed text and images remained the most efficient way of sharing information.
“After rummaging round the workshop, Eve discovered a collection of figures required for the printing of a so-called Shepherd’s Almanac, in which objects are represented by signs, pictures, and symbols in red, black and blue. Old Séchard, illiterate as he was, had formerly made a lot of money by printing this little book intended for equally illiterate people. An almanac of this kind costs only a penny and comprises a hundred and twenty-eight pages of very small format. Delighted at the success of her broadsheets—the sort of production which is a speciality with small provincial presses—Madame Séchard decided to print the Shepherds’ Almanac on a large scale by putting her profits into it.“
Honoré de Balzac, Illusions Perdues, 1843 (Translation Herbert J. Hunt)
