TINNED FOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 February 1940, Page 9

TINNED FOOD

SWEET ALTHOUGH HUNDRED YEARS OLD. Labelled that the tins should be opened with hammer and chisel, tinopeners not having then come into existence, carrots for Captain Parry’s third expedition in search of the NorthWest Passage in 1824 have just been opened and found to be in perfectly good condition for eating. They smelt and tasted sweet, although 115 years in a tinned can had given them a slight metallic flavour. The “tin cans” in which fruit and vegetables were packed more than a century ago were iron containers coated inside with tin, and were first used by Bryan Donkin in England; he was one of the directing minds of Hall’s Engineering Works, which still carry on at Dartford, the oldest works of their kind in the country. Not all fruits could be tinned then, however, as there was the danger of acids attacking the coatin. The tin lining today is itself coated with a highly resistant chemical varnish or enamel which makes it possible to can any kind of food from a poached egg to a lobster’s tail. Before the use of canned vegetables and fruits sailors suffered greatly from scurvy, caused by eating the salted meats and dried soups which was carried by ships.