Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

animal products Denmark Europe livestock
What makes an English breakfast?
peter 0

The first shipment of Danish bacon arrived in October 1847. Through the nineteenth century, Denmark used to export wheat to Britain, but North America’s railway network reached the east coast in the 1840s and generated a tidal wave of cheap grain across Europe. Like the rest of its European neighbours, Denmark was unable to compete with transatlantic prices and turned instead to converting American grain into eggs, dairy products and bacon. At this time, the whey left over from cheesemaking was fed to pigs, who can put on 100 grams a day to their body weight.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Danish agriculture underwent a transformation in which livestock cooperatives flourished, especially those raising pigs. In 1887, Germany banned imports of Danish pigs and bacon, which pushed the cooperatives to increase the volumes of bacon shipped to the UK. It is worth remembering that without universal refrigeration, pigmeat had to travel as salt pork or bacon.

canning Europe food manufacture France
Time travel for food
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The process of sealing food into a glass jar or a can and boiling the sealed units has been used for over two centuries. In 1812 French revolutionary Nicolas Appert published a user’s manual to the process, called The Art Of Preserving for Several Years Animal and Vegetable Substances. The process is often referred to eponymously as Appertisation and the food is literally cooked in the can (or bottle).

Appert was making and selling bottled vegetables and other foodstuffs in Paris, during the dark days of the terror and Robespierre. Ever since the French revolution, canned food has sustained earnest adventurers atop the highest mountain peaks, in the depths of the oceans, not forgetting orbiting space stations.

Although first published in French, within months English translations were being studied in England and the technique was applied to preserve food for long sea voyages. A French naval captain complained that this was a French military secret which had been smuggled across the Channel and was now being used against its inventors.

The reality was in fact more mundane. English engineer Bryan Donkin ran a workshop in Bermondsey, London and was looking for an additional manufacturing activity to stay in business. Donkin licensed Appert’s process from a travelling commercial agent who went by the name Peter Durand in England and Pierre Durand in France. Donkin set to work filling tinplate canisters with food, only to find that he had missed something out.

Donkin summoned Durand, who called Appert away from the wreckage of his house and workshop to visit Donkin in Bermondsey during 1814. The problem was simple enough: the food was not being sealed in its cans until it had cooled down, by which time there was a risk of spoilage.

By the time Appert left England, Durand had a fully working filling line and Appert had seen at first hand just how effective tinplate canisters were for storing food. The quality of tinplate available in France was nowhere near as good as the tinplate Donkin was buying. Nevertheless, by paying over the odds for tinplate, Appert started to use metal packaging for his products.

Originally from the Champagne region of France, Appert was used to packing food in heavy glass jars. These were not well-received by the French navy, on the grounds of breakage, and needed more attention when sealing the jars and keeping out the air. Appert spent the rest of his life experimenting with canned and bottled food until he reached the age of 91, dying in poverty and obscurity during 1841.

Read a short story about Nicolas Appert

raw
Glass of water
peter 0

Thank you for your input. Clearly there is a little bit more to this scenario than meets the eye. Since you are (hypothetically) working in a bar, drinks are your core business and source of income. You can opt to overlook the cost to the business, which is, let’s face it, not a huge sum.

You could risk being taken for a hard-nosed bar steward and make up a price for the service of filling a glass from the tap. Your guest might have medication to take and need a swig of water to help it on its way. In that case, it could be seen as unfriendly.

Point blank refusal could lead to a scene, but might be necessary. In France, a law passed in 1967 backs bar owners who do not want to compromise their core business. A bar earns its keep from selling drinks in whatever form they come.

Had the fictitious customer gone to a restaurant in France and ordered a meal, the establishment would be expected to provide a place setting, which would include a carafe of water and bread. This is because the meal forms the core business and the place setting is part of the service.