Spam - A Global History: Interview with Dr Kelly Spring

Hello my hungry archaeogastronomers!

Humans always wondered why food spoils, what makes it go off, and how to preserve it for longer, and keep it nutritious and healthy. Along the millenia we devised many ingenious ways to make fresh food last, and taste good but also provide us with calories and nutrients.

Nicolas Appert was not a scientist, but a former brewer who became steward to the duke Christian IV of Zweibrücken, then to the Duchess of Forbach, and thereafter became a confectioner. As he made the sweets that were preserved with sugar, he became obsessed with an idea: research into the keeping of foods that until now were considered highly perishable, such as milk, meat and green vegetables.

A native of Chalons-Sur-Marne 1749 -1841 Appert is considered to have discovered the process of preservation by sterilization. No man is a prophet in his own country as the saying goes and so it was the Americans who were the first to call the process ‘appertizing’. He was at least officially declared a benefactor of humanity in 1822 by the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale, but nonetheless died in poverty and was buried in a communal grave, like Molière before him. 

He made his methods common knowledge so that everyone could preserve food at home, and never bothered to take out a patent (which the Americans and English did not scruple to do on their own accounts). Preserving was basically a very simple business, once you had the idea. All you had to do, said Appert, was

First, enclose the substances you wish to preserve in bottles or jars; second, close the openings of your vessels with the greatest care, for success depends principally on the seal; third, submit the substances, thus enclosed, to the action of boiling water in a bain-marie for a period of longer or shorter duration, depending on their nature and the manner I shall indicate for each kind of foodstuff; fourth, remove the bottles from the bain-marie at the appropriate time. 

This method was to be the basis for all the preserved food produced on the planet, from industrial conveyor-belt lines to housewives bottling jars of garden produce in a home sterilizer. The drawback to glass was its fragility, and it was soon replaced by cans of welded tin-plate, used first by the Dutch for fish and then by the British for fruits preserved in syrup.

Without him the history of canning and tinned food, would be perhaps a lot different, and the subject of today’s episode not possible...

So on today’s episode I have a very special guest to tell me all about the history of one very specific, iconic and somewhat perhaps misunderstood tinned food: SPAM! 

Yes Spam! Dr Kelly Spring is the author of a brand new book that it is coming out this June in UK and July in the US about Spam, called “Spam - A global history”

Kelly is a food historian and consultant and you can find more about her work and her services at theforkfront.com where they bring the past to life through food. She also has a food history podcast called Hungry Historians which you can find on Spotify. I’ll put a link in the show notes with the podcast as well as her new book.

Enjoy!!!

Get a copy of the book here:

https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/spam

Listen to Kelly's podcast here:

https://open.spotify.com/show/2dd70WM8rXd2rMKepkbjwu?si=708838ac72d549c6

Love and cheese

Thom & The Delicious Legacy

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