Before Refrigerators, How Did Americans Keep Food From Killing Them?

Before the refrigerator, keeping food from rotting was a daily fight. Americans harvested ice from frozen lakes, stored milk in springhouses, packed pork in salt barrels, sealed sausages under lard and boiled their summer harvest into Mason jars. Some of these tricks saved lives. Others quietly killed thousands of people. And the invention that was supposed to fix everything came with a gas that could kill a whole family in their sleep. Join Silas, an old general-store keeper, for 10 ways Americans kept food from killing them, and what each one really cost. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 Life before the fridge 1:11 #1 The Icehouse 3:43 #2 The Springhouse 5:41 #3 The Root Cellar 7:30 #4 The Salt Barrel 9:18 #5 The Smokehouse 10:53 #6 The Lard Crock 12:27 #7 The Water Glass Eggs 13:37 #8 The Mason Jar 15:51 #9 Milk 17:47 #10 The Icebox and the Killer Fridge 20:02 What it took to get here In this video: • Frederic Tudor, the "Ice King" who shipped New England ice to India • The milk sickness that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother • Civil War hardtack and "worm castles" • Why margarine was pink by law in some states • Swill milk, "embalmed milk" and the Poison Squad • The 1929 refrigerator leaks, and the man behind Freon and leaded gasoline Subscribe for more stories about how Americans really lived in the 1700s–1900s. #history #americanhistory #19thcentury