- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Headline Book Publishing; First edition edition (6 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747223343
- ISBN-13: 978-0747223344
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.2 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 616,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
An abiding image from Pickled, Potted and Canned is of endless receding generations of ancestors performing acts of extraordinary ingenuity in order to eat. For, as Sue Shephard's fascinating history of food preservation (no, really) makes clear, there can have been very few places, at very few times, when there was enough fresh food to eat all the year round. In order to live, it was necessary to extend the edibility of the foodstuffs at hand. This was done from the very earliest times, with methods that grew increasingly sophisticated as the centuries passed. Drying, salting, brining, smoking, pickling, fermenting, concentrating, dehydrating, bottling, canning... The range of techniques, and of foods to which they applied, is immense. Very interesting lights are thrown on societies by the choices they make, or are obliged to make, in preserving. The ancient Egyptians used the same word for the salt curing of fish as for the embalming of the dead. (Did they expect to be soaked and reconstituted in the afterlife? And after that, what?) In pagan Lithuania a god of pickled food was worshipped. Somalians perforce use an extraordinary range of fermented meat products--at the most extreme, a kind of haggis is made from a gazelle's stomach packed with leftovers that would normally only interest a vulture (intestines, spleen, offal, bone, hooves, even urine) and hung on a tree in the sun for three days, "by which time a very strong smell has developed". This is an important subject, for the processes by which humanity learned to preserve food are part of the history of civilisation. Sue Shephard's treatment of it is both serious and entertaining; she writes wittily and with very considerable learning, worn lightly. --Robin Davidson
Product Description
Stories from around the world of a history of food preservation. Resplendent with historical figures from Francis Bacon who died trying to freeze a chicken, to Attila the Hun who 'gallop-cured' his meat by storing it under his saddle as he rode, this is a social history of food and civilization.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a book you suddenly come across and think, how brilliant I never knew all this fascinating stuff. It is really well researched, but more important it is full of terrific stories and curious facts about our food and our history and what we used to do to stay alive in bad times as well as making delicious preserved foods. It is clever, funny, entertaining and a really good read. perfect for holidays when you can read out extraordinary facts and stories to friends.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
In this concise yet detailed history of man's attempts to provide food for times of need, Ms.Shephard describes all the usual, and some very unusual methods of preserving food.
In chapters devoted to each particular method, she details how, by trial and error and by observation, people have discovered ways of extending the life of foodstuffs well past the natural sell-by date.
This leads to the means by which explorers could subsist independently of the land or sea they were travelling in, thus expanding the boundaries of trade and colonisation.
However, some of the preserving methods brought their attendant disadvantages, such as vitamin deficiencies, like scurvy or pellagra - the ways of combating these are also dealt with in the book.
Ms.Shephard writes in a comfortable, informative style that is neither dumbing-down, nor patronising, but with clear, logical progression within the particular subject - with the occasional illuminating aside to spice things up.
Drawing heavily on historical accounts, she has meticulously researched the subject and presented us with a fine addition to any amateur historian's library.
A very worthwhile read *****
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
At first the title may seem boring to the average eye,but give it twenty pages and you are well under-way!An exciting,yet interesting and interlectual piece of work from a fine author. If you want to know anything about food preservation,get our your credit card and buy it from Amazon.co.uk.It's well worth it! This book is extremely factual and is bulging with information.A good buy and a good read.
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