FOOD PRESERVATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 November 1939, Page 7

FOOD PRESERVATION

I TINNED MEAT FRESH AFTER MANY YEARS. How long will food keep in a state of preservation? In 1930 a tin of canned food which for 40 years had been in a grocery shop at Lasswade. near Edinburgh, was opened and the contents were found to be appetising. But preserved meat has been kept in an edible condition for much longer periods than 40 years. When Sir William Edward Parry went to find the NorthWest Passage, one of his ships. H.M.S. Fury was wrecked on the ice and some stores were dumped. They were later recovered by Sir John Ross, brought back to England, and for more than a century, lay in museums. Recently some of the "tins" were opened by skilled chemists and bacteriologists of a food research laboratory and their contents were examined. Parry's "tins" or iron canisters, of roast veal and gravy were quite fresh. In the British Museum Laboratory, there is r. | specimen of Irish bog butter, dating back several hundred years before the Christian era. It is still moist and granular, with characteristics that plainly prove its original purpose.