How People Kept Food From Rotting Before Fridges

It's April in an English farmhouse in the 1790s, and much of what's left in the larder was killed, caught or dug up last autumn. How did people keep food from rotting before fridges? Brine strong enough to float an egg, hams in the chimney smoke, Norwegian stockfish dried by the wind, Korean kimchi jars buried in the ground, Captain Cook's sauerkraut, butter sealed an inch thick, ships full of New England ice, and decades of tin cans with no can opener. CHAPTERS 0:00 April in an English farmhouse 0:41 November — The Blood Month 1:53 Salt — An Egg That Floats 3:43 Smoke & Wind — Hanging in the Chimney 5:24 Sour — The Captain's Cabbage 7:05 Sugar & Fat — An Inch of Butter 8:16 Cold Earth — Into the Cellar 9:42 Ice — Ships Full of Ice 11:27 The Jar — Decades Without an Opener 13:10 April — The Hungry Gap SOURCES Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747; 1770 edition). https://archive.org/stream/artofcooke... Gervase Markham, The English Huswife (1615; 1623 edition), EEBO-TCP A06913. https://distantreader.org/stacks/earl... Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573; 1848 edition). https://archive.org/download/somefive... Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management (1861). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10136 Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1 (1851). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998 F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor, vol. 2 (1797). https://archive.org/details/b28773135... E. H. Kodicek and F. G. Young, "Captain Cook and Scurvy", Notes and Records of the Royal Society 24 (1969). https://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/hemil... Captain Cook's Journal During His First Voyage, ed. W. J. L. Wharton (1893); James Cook, Philosophical Transactions 66 (1776). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8106 Nicolas Appert, The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances (1810; English edition 1812). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52551 Fredrick Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons (1820). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19031 Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home (1869). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6598 Henry Hall, "Report on the Ice Industry of the United States", Tenth Census, vol. 22 (1888). https://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/v... UNESCO, Kimjang, making and sharing kimchi (2013). https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/00881 Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Traditional Foods: Pickles; Dried foods. https://www.maff.go.jp/e/policies/mar... Slow Food Bergen, The Cultural and Culinary Traditions of Stockfish (Norwegian intangible heritage list). https://www.immateriellkulturarv.no/e... National Park Service: Celilo Falls; Hopewell Furnace Spring House; Pipe Spring Spring Room. https://www.nps.gov/places/celilo-fal... Dorset History Centre, "Dorset Ice Houses"; English Heritage. https://news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/dor... Linda Hall Library, "Bryan Donkin"; John Nutting, "History of Canmaking", The Canmaker (2010). https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/... F. J. Erbguth, "Historical notes on botulism", Movement Disorders 19 Suppl. 8 (2004). S. J. Hardman, "The can opener", Tools and Trades History Society. https://www.taths.org.uk/images/TTArt... Made with AI: the pictures, the motion and the narration are AI-generated from the researched sources listed above. Where historians disagree, the video says so. Common Era: how ordinary people actually lived. A new episode every day. #history #foodhistory #commonera