Long before the advent of the All American Pressure Cooker Canner, preserving food was a necessary task.  And the methods used in the past were often tedious.

The history of home canning can quite easily be traced to the early 1800s. But there are plenty of suggestions that man’s attempt to preserve food started well before that. The Egyptians used to place sealed jars containing food in the Pharaohs tomb for his use in the afterlife. The Romans certainly used sealed earthenware containers and buried them for future use. Although these early attempts were hardly successful that evidence of man’s obsession with retaining the bounties of a current harvest for the future.

It is also said that Napoleon authorized the use of sealed glass jars to preserve food for his troops during long campaigns.

As far as what we would currently term canning, the inventor of the Mason jar, John L Mason, first introduced his famous threaded jars in 1858. These jars became the central focus around which our modern approach to home canning developed.

In the early days, fruit was the most commonly preserved item. American women pioneered the increasing use of fruit preservation and extended it to vegetables. The idea was that the home orchard’s produce could be more completely harvested in that all excess fruit and vegetables could be preserved for use during the winter months when fresh produce became unavailable.

As sugar became less expensive and wood-burning stoves became a common household implement, preservation methods developed into a kitchen-based activity which all families could utilize.

The process involved placing the jars in a large bath like, water filled container on top of the wood-burning stove. The food was placed in the jars and went through a cooking process before being filled with hot liquids, usually sugar-based syrup in the case of fruit, to seal the food in, and then applying a screw top lid.

The jars had to be regularly inspected to ensure that there was no spoilage. From all reports, the food was often overcooked but still quite edible. Nevertheless, it fitted the bill for the times, and the cost of food purchases were reduced considerably. Salt and sugar were the main preservative elements of the canning process, so sauces and pickles were favorite products.

There were many other products apart from the Mason jars however. Over the years many manufacturers entered the market and provided kits to be used for home canning. Atlas jars and Bell jars were popular as were the lightning jars manufactured with a metal clamp and a glass lid.

Even if those products are no longer used in today’s home canning industry they are still popular collector’s items and can be found at second-hand shops around the country.

Thank goodness the All American Pressure Cooker Canner has made preserving your excess produce a simple task. Read our review on the All American Presser Canner and in no time at all you will have a pantry stocked full of  home preserved great tasting food  even when it is normally out of season.