Can It!: The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods - Hardcover

Allen, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1780235720 ISBN 13: 9781780235721

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2016

Synopsis

What do beer, cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut, miso, jam, even chocolate—I’ll bet you didn’t know—have in common? They are all preserved foods. Artisanal canned tomatoes and homemade kimchee might be trendy items now, but they come from a culinary need as old as human civilization itself. Can It! celebrates those transformed and transforming foods that have done so much to create the diversity of cuisines found around the world, bringing readers on a tangy adventure of all the ways necessity has bred deliciousness.
           
Food preservation rests in a simple problem: food tends to come in concentrated periods of abundance and then quickly spoil. Today we might pump it full of preservatives or throw it in the freezer, but for most of our time eating the things that the earth provides, we haven’t had these luxuries. As Allen shows, that’s been a wonderful limitation: our ancestors, knowing next to nothing about organic chemistry, found consistent techniques not only to preserve the foods they grew but to alter them—to delicious effects. Wine is more than old grape juice, cheese more than spoiled milk. Allen details how these transformations resulted in new flavors, textures, and, ultimately, new ways of defining the tastes and culture of a community, which passed down its knowledge from generation to generation. Exploring the history and science of preservation, he examines all the major techniques—from drying to smoking to salting to canning to fermentation—reveling in the cornucopia of different foods they have produced. Allaying the fears of the squeamish, he serves up easy-to-do historic and modern recipes that will help any home cook participate in one of culinary history’s most hallowed traditions. 

About this title

About the Author

Gary Allen is adjunct professor at Empire State College, SUNY. He is the author of Herbs: A Global History and Sausage: A Global History, both also published by Reaktion Books.

Review

“Can It!: The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods at first glance might seem to repeat the contents of numerous ‘how to can’ books on the market; but any foodie making such a hasty evaluation would be doing a disservice to themselves by passing on this book with the presumption that its information mirrors others on the market. It’s not a recipe or ‘how to can’ guide but a history and scientific coverage of the changing world of food preservation which surveys all major canning techniques including salting and fermentation, pairing historic with modern recipes and examining different cuisines and approaches from around the world. . . . Any cook interested in not just recipes but the wider-reaching history of food preservation will find Can It!: The Perils and Pleasures of Preserving Foods an unexpectedly lively, fun read.”
  (Donovan's Bookshelf)

Edition details

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1780235720
• ISBN 13: 9781780235721
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224