François aper invents the food storage container. Canning king. Hearty "second front"
Nicolas Francois Apper(French Nicolas Appert; November 17, 1749, Chalon-en-Champagne, - June 1, 1841, Massy) - French inventor of canned food, brother of Benjamin Nicolas Marie Appert.
Upper's invention replaced the traditional ways of storing food in those years - drying and salting. In 2009, this invention was exactly 200 years old, because it was in 1809 that Upper, after conducting several experiments, sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior of France, in which he proposed a new method - canning. In 1810, Nicolas Apper received the Invention Award personally from Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the city where the inventor died, a bronze bust was installed for him.
Apper's canned food
V late XIX- the beginning of the XX century " encyclopedic Dictionary Brockhaus and Efron "described the invention of Nicolas Francois Upper:
“Apper recommends, to preserve meat and vegetable supplies, put the prepared supplies in white cans, seal them hermetically and boil in salted water for 1/2 hour to 4 hours, depending on the size of the can, and leave it at a temperature of more than 100 ° C. they are preserved in this form. This method was invented by François Apper in 1804; in 1809 he presented it to the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Paris, where a special commission was appointed for research. The experiments carried out proved that within 8 months they were perfectly preserved: meat with gravy, strong broth, milk, green peas, beans, cherries, apricots. The French government has appointed the inventor 12,000 francs. as a reward on the condition that he elaborate and print his method in detail. In 1810, an essay was published: "L'art de conserver toutes les substances animales et vgtales" (5th ed., Paris, 1834). Many have tried to slightly change Upper's trick, by the way, Jones, who inserted metal tubes into cans, connecting them to an airless space where air is drawn from cans while they boil; the advantage of this method is that you can boil the meat less, which makes it tastier; but with a lower boil, canned food is stored worse, and therefore the benefits of taking Jones are very doubtful. Further experiments showed the advantages of Upper's canned food, which is very common on sea voyages and even in households, where canned meat is especially consumed. A.'s reception is based on the destruction of the embryos of putrefaction, bacteria, and other organisms. Until then, it was thought that the oxygen of the stale air caused spoilage of canned food, and that prolonged boiling and the influence of organic matter turned it into carbonic acid - a wrong view. A long boil is necessary to kill bacteria, and therefore the greater the mass of the stored substances, the longer they should be boiled. "
Nicolas Upper
The French emperor needed them to conquer Russia.
The man in question was a restaurateur. Nevertheless, he made a discovery. Yes, such that humanity remembers him with gratitude.
His name was Nicolas François Apper. He introduced the innovation to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. It was the world's first canned food. The word was of Latin origin - son-servo means to preserve.
After the tasting, Napoleon approved the brought food, and after a while presented Upper with a solid monetary prize, a medal and the title "Benefactor of Humanity". This happened 205 years ago - in 1810.
When the army is marching
A native of the city of Chalon-sur-Marne, which is one and a half hundred kilometers from Paris, he was known as a grasping businessman with excellent flair. At first, Upper was a land trader, and a successful one. Later he began to supply food to the Napoleonic army.
This huge, multilingual mass fought incessantly, and a lot, a lot of food was required. Moreover, good, high quality. After all, Napoleon was right when he said: "The army marches while the stomach is full."
Upper moved to Paris, where he bought a small restaurant on the Champs Elysees. Things went well, and Nicolas opened another establishment, then another. The crowd poured into his restaurants, since the menu was excellent, even exquisite. Among the visitors were famous and influential people. Upper made good contacts and, thanks to his connections, became a supplier of food for Napoleon himself.
Now - about the historic visit of Apperak to Napoleon. He came to the palace with three closed vessels. In one there was lamb with buckwheat porridge, in the other - stewed pork, in the third - peach compote.
The Emperor looked at the visitor in disbelief. And he invited him to start the tasting himself. Then he gave a piece of meat to the dog. After making sure that the food was not poisoned, Napoleon himself took up the fork.
A stone's throw from the prison
The emperor chewed for a long time, then frowned.
I think you used to cook tastier.
Forgive me, sire, but these dishes were prepared six months ago ...
Napoleon turned purple:
Have you decided to joke with me ?!
Upper's heart sank into his heels. Another minute and he would be thrown into the Bastille as a charlatan. In desperation, he blurted out:
I speak the truth, sire! This is canned food - food intended for long-term storage. In a military campaign, they will be irreplaceable.
Napoleon's eyes flashed. He understood all the benefits of the offer! His Majesty's soldiers will no longer have problems with provisions. From now on, there will be no obstacles for the Great Army, besides well-fed and vigorous!
Here is what is written about the method of the French restaurateur in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries:
“Apper recommends to preserve meat and vegetable supplies ... hermetically seal them and boil in salt water ... and, heating slightly over 100 ° C, leave them in this form to be preserved. This method was invented by François Apper in 1804; in 1809 he presented it to the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Paris, where a special commission was appointed for research. The experiments carried out proved that within 8 months they were perfectly preserved: meat with gravy, strong broth, milk, green pea, beans, cherries, apricots. The French government has appointed the inventor of 12,000 francs. as a reward on the condition that he elaborate and print his method in detail. In 1810 the composition was published: "L" art de conserver toutes les substances animales et végé tales "(5th ed., Paris, 1834) ...".
The first canned food was placed in champagne bottles. Why? Firstly, Apper liked such a container, and secondly, thick glass could withstand prolonged boiling at high temperatures.
The first canned food resembled delicious dishes. These were, in particular, lamb stew, consommé, beans with mushrooms, rabbit stew, potofe soup - beef with roots and vegetables, strawberry puree.
Unfulfilled hopes
In 1812, two years after Upper was awarded the title of "Benefactor of Humanity", Napoleonic troops invaded Russia. Although the campaign was successful, supply problems soon began. Heavy carts with provisions began to lag behind the advancing troops. The French began to take food from the Russian peasants, but they hid the food. The army went forward, but the soldiers and officers could hardly contain the growing discontent ...
But where is Upper's canned food that Bonaparte was counting on? And were they in Napoleon's army? Yes, but in small quantities. The fact is that the production of canned food turned out to be too expensive and laborious.
For better safety on the long journey from France to Russia, the products began to be put in cans. The workers cut out the body, bottom and lid with special scissors. The body was rolled into a cylinder and sealed on the sides. A bottom and a lid with a hole were attached to it and the contents were laid. Then the jar was heated for a long time to remove air, after which, having sealed the hole with a tin disk, it was again subjected to heat treatment.
Some cans weighed more than ten (!) Kilograms and had to be opened with a hammer or chisel. Even a sharpened army bayonet could hardly help. In general, Napoleon's hopes did not come true ...
During Patriotic War In 1812, the Russians found jars with unknown contents at the prisoners of the French. However, the Russians were afraid to open them, and, moreover, they were afraid not of poison, but of canned frogs. According to legend, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army Mikhail Kutuzov was the first to dare to taste the "basurmanskie" trophies. He came to the conclusion that the jars did not contain frog meat, but lamb stew, which was not badly cooked, too ...
"Fast" and "Bistro"
Once Napoleon, exiled to Saint Helena, was sent canned food, the taste of which seemed familiar to him. The prisoner smiled sadly, remembering how presumptuous he believed that the new food would help the soldiers of France in their feats of arms ...
As for Upper, his businesses continued to flourish. When the Russian army entered Paris in 1814, the restaurateur began to regale its soldiers and officers. Rumor has it that the enterprising Nicolas became the organizer of the world's first fast food establishments. The name came to his mind when he heard how the Cossacks and hussars, dismounted at the door of the establishment, impatiently knocked with sabers and sabers at the door of his establishment, continuously repeating: “Quickly! Quickly!"
Soon, the restaurants of Nicolas Upper flaunted the sign "Bistro" and helpful waiters greeted the Russians right on the doorstep with trays of food and wine lined on plates.
Upper, like a true businessman, did his best to exploit his products. He opened the shop "Various food in bottles and boxes", founded the canning empire "Upper and Sons" ...
The innovator lived for more than ninety years and left behind a bright memory. More than six dozen streets in various cities of France are named after Upper! And in the city of Chalon-sur-Marne, there is a museum dedicated to the man who invented canned food.
Many years after Upper's death, in 1857, at an exhibition in London, canned food made by him for Napoleon was discovered and tested. The products were recognized as completely edible!
Greetings from Khlestakov
The first mention of canned food in Russia is just a few lines in one of the issues of the Russian Archive magazine for 1821: “Now we have reached such a degree of perfection that ready-made dinners from Roberts in Paris are sent to India in some kind of tinware of a new invention, where they are kept from corruption. "
Gogol's play The Inspector General, written in the mid-30s of the last century, contains the first fiction mention of canned food: “Soup in a saucepan came from Paris right on the boat; open the lid - steam that cannot be found in nature. " Khlestakov said this, talking about his life in St. Petersburg.
... The first cannery in Russia was opened 145 years ago - in 1870 in St. Petersburg. Its founder, entrepreneur Franz Aziber worked in the Upper way. He rolled mostly beef in cans with various side dishes.
Another memorable date - 140 years ago, in 1875, canned food was included in the soldier's ration. The servicemen especially revered stew - one can held a pound of meat (about 400 grams), that is, daily rate for the soldiers. The label contained simple instructions for use: open with a bayonet and, warming up, eat. But just with the warm-up, difficulties often arose. Moreover, in combat conditions, when it was necessary to hide from the enemy ...
In 1897, engineer Evgeny Fedorov presented a heated tin can - it had a double bottom, in which water and quicklime were placed. When the bottom was turned, the water and lime entered into a chemical reaction, and thus the jar was heated.
The third significant date is 1915. 100 years ago, a batch of canned food was sent to the front for the first time. According to experts, they were distinguished by high quality. Moreover, canned food retained its properties for a very long time.
Hearty "second front"
At one time, newspapers wrote about the participant in the First World War, Andrei Muratov, who for half a century kept canned food received at the front. In 1966 he took the jar with the inscription “Petropavlovsk cannery. Stewed meat. 1916 ”at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of the Canning Industry. Analysis and tasting showed that the meat was perfectly preserved!
Speaking of stew, one cannot but recall another war - the Great Patriotic War. Some have tried, while others only by hearsay know about the "second front". That was the ironic name for the cans that our allies sent in abundance to the USSR.
You can treat the notorious Lend-Lease in different ways, criticize the Americans and the British for the fact that they supposedly bought off us with canned food, not wanting to engage in a decisive, bloody battle with the Germans. But how many people - at the front and in the rear - were saved from starvation by cans of foreign stew!
Even today this product is very popular. Not only at dachas, on hikes, but also in ordinary, urban conditions. The hostess is reluctant to cook, and her hand reaches for the coveted jar. Fragrant stew, but with steaming potatoes - a sweet thing!
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Upper's invention replaced the traditional ways of storing food in those years - drying and salting. In 2009, this invention was exactly 200 years old, because it was in 1809 that Upper, after conducting several experiments, sent a letter to the Minister of the Interior of France, in which he proposed a new method - canning. In 1810, Nicolas Apper received the Invention Award personally from Napoleon Bonaparte.
In the city where the inventor died, a bronze bust was installed
Apper's canned food
At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron" described the invention of Nicolas François Upper:
« Apper recommends, to preserve meat and vegetable supplies, put the prepared supplies in white cans, seal them hermetically and boil in salted water for 1/2 hour to 4 hours, depending on the size of the can, and leave them at a temperature of more than 100 ° C. persist in this form. This method was invented by François Apper in 1804; in 1809 he presented it to the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Paris, where a special commission was appointed for research. The experiments carried out proved that within 8 months they were perfectly preserved: meat with gravy, strong broth, milk, green peas, beans, cherries, apricots. The French government assigned the inventor 12,000 francs. as a reward on the condition that he elaborate and print his method in detail. In 1810, an essay was published: "L'art de conserver toutes les substances animales et v? G? Tales" (5th ed., Paris, 1834). Many have tried to slightly change Upper's trick, by the way, Jones, who inserted metal tubes into cans, connecting them to an airless space, where air is drawn from cans while they boil; the advantage of this method is that you can boil the meat less, which makes it tastier; but with a lower boil, canned food is stored worse, and therefore the benefits of taking Jones are very doubtful. Further experiments showed the advantages of Upper's canned food, which is very common on sea voyages and even in the household, where canned meat is especially consumed. A.'s reception is based on the destruction of the embryos of putrefaction, bacteria, and other organisms. Until then, it was thought that the oxygen of the stale air caused spoilage of canned food, and that prolonged boiling and the influence of organic matter turned it into carbonic acid - a wrong view. A long boil is necessary to destroy bacteria, and therefore the greater the mass of the stored substances, the longer they should be boiled.».
French confectioner, inventor of the hermetic food preservation system; is considered to be the "father of canning".
In the period from 1784 to 1795, Upper worked in Paris (Paris) as a pastry chef and chef. In 1795, he began experimenting with different approaches to food preservation; he experimented with soups, vegetables, juices, dairy products, jellies, jams, and all sorts of syrups. Upper canned his products in glass jars; These jars were sealed with corks, filled with wax and then boiled thoroughly. Nicolas invented the general idea rather quickly, but it took a lot of time to fully work out the details.
In 1795, the French army offered a prize of 12,000 francs for a fundamentally new - and, most importantly, effective - method of storing food. In total, it took Upper about 14-15 years to experiment; however, during this period the prize remained unclaimed.
In January 1810, the confectioner received the long-awaited cash prize and award personally from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The same year saw the light of the work of Upper "Art de conserver les substances animales et végétales" ("L" Art de conserver les substances animales et végétales) - the first cookbook devoted to the techniques of canning.
Founded near Paris, La Maison Appert was the first of its kind; Interestingly, Upper began his production even before Louis Pasteur officially proved that bacteria die from heat. Having patented his invention, Upper began to produce a wide range of canned foods. At the Nicolas factory, products - meat and eggs, milk and ready-made meals - were placed in special wide-necked bottles, which were sealed according to an already worked out scheme. The plug was hammered into the neck using a special clamp; after that, the bottle was wrapped in a special cloth and dipped in boiling water. A small layer of air remained between the cork and the actual product; however, subsequent boiling destroyed all living things that could be in this layer (as well as in the food itself or on the walls of the vessel). The time required to "brew" the bottle was determined personally by Upper.
In honor of the inventor, the canning process was called "apparisation" for some time; however, this term did not really catch on. This process was somewhat different from pasteurization invented later - Upper used temperatures much higher during cooking than Pasteur, which often affected the taste of the processed products in a not very positive way.
The Upper method was so simple and effective that it was used throughout Europe. However, for a long time the only method of apparisation did not remain - already in 1810, the British inventor (of French, by the way, origin) Peter Durand developed his own canning scheme, based on the use of cans. In 1812, both patents were bought by the British Bryan Donkin and John Hall; together they put the production of canned food on a fundamentally new level... Just 10 years later, apparisation came to the United States; Tin cans, by the way, became really popular much later - it was too difficult to open them. For a long time, cans were opened exclusively with a hammer and a chisel. Only in 1855 the Englishman Robert Yates invented the can opener and the modern-looking cans "went to the people."
The main problem of long travels has long been the lack of food; it didn't make much sense to make large supplies for a long journey - the food spoiled faster than they had time to eat it. That all changed when the Frenchman Nicolas Apper invented a process called "apparisation" - the prototype of modern canning.
French confectioner, inventor of the hermetic food preservation system; is considered to be the "father of canning".
In the period from 1784 to 1795, Upper worked in Paris (Paris) as a pastry chef and chef. In 1795, he began experimenting with different approaches to food preservation; he experimented with soups, vegetables, juices, dairy products, jellies, jams, and all sorts of syrups. Upper canned his products in glass jars; These jars were sealed with corks, filled with wax and then boiled thoroughly. Nicolas invented the general idea rather quickly, but it took a lot of time to fully work out the details.
In 1795, the French army offered a prize of 12,000 francs for a fundamentally new - and, most importantly, effective - method of storing food. In total, it took Upper about 14-15 years to experiment; however, during this period the prize remained unclaimed.
In January 1810, the confectioner received the long-awaited cash prize and award personally from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The same year saw the light of the work of Upper "Art de conserver les substances animales et végétales" ("L" Art de conserver les substances animales et végétales) - the first cookbook devoted to the techniques of canning.
Founded near Paris, La Maison Appert was the first factory of its kind; Interestingly, Upper began his production even before Louis Pasteur officially proved that bacteria die from heat. Having patented his invention, Upper began to produce a wide range of canned foods. At the Nicolas factory, products - meat and eggs, milk and ready-made meals - were placed in special shir
round-necked bottles, which were sealed according to an already worked out scheme. The plug was hammered into the neck using a special clamp; after that, the bottle was wrapped in a special cloth and dipped in boiling water. A small layer of air remained between the cork and the actual product; however, subsequent boiling destroyed all living things that could be in this layer (as well as in the food itself or on the walls of the vessel). The time required to "brew" the bottle was determined personally by Upper.
In honor of the inventor, the canning process was called "apparisation" for some time; however, this term did not really catch on. This process was somewhat different from pasteurization invented later - Upper used temperatures much higher during cooking than Pasteur, which often affected the taste of the processed products in a not very positive way.
The Upper method was so simple and effective that it was used throughout Europe. However, for a long time the only method of apparisation did not remain - already in 1810, the British inventor (of French, by the way, origin) Peter Durand developed his own canning scheme, based on the use of cans. In 1812, both patents were bought by the British Bryan Donkin and John Hall; together they have taken the production of canned food to a whole new level. Just 10 years later, apparisation came to the United States; Tin cans, by the way, became really popular much later - it was too difficult to open them. For a long time, cans were opened exclusively with a hammer and a chisel. It was only in 1855 that the Englishman Robert Yates invented the can opener and the modern-looking cans "went to the people."
