The Miracle of Tin Cans

Again, for one of my upcoming books!

“You ate peaches?  In winter?”  Ellendale stared at Mike. “How is that possible?”’

Mike blinked. Here he was, in a world with dragons and wizards and… this was what people were excited about?

“I bought it from the store, you know, a can of peaches,” he said. “Don’t you have that here?”

“Cans?” Ellendale brushed back some of her golden hair and stared at Mike in confusion. “Is that an incantation? I have have not heard of such a thing.”

Mike paused. He’d wondered how an out of work handyman could survive after he’d been cast into a land of magic and demons. But now…

“You know, my mom and I worked on canning, and you could preserve peaches for an entire year,” he said. “Have ‘em any time you want.” He shrugged. “But, you know, I’d need some help—“

“I  WILL GIVE YOU ANYTHING YOU DESIRE!” the mage said. Mike could swear she was actually starting to drool. “JUST SO LONG AS I CAN EAT PEACHES IN WINTER!”

The tin can. I’d bet that nobody on the planet earth, save for someone who has spent all their live on an isolated island has noteaten from a tin can. After all, it’s super convenient. By a can of beef stew, stick it on your shelf, forget about it, and a year later, realize that you need something to eat.

Grab the can, open it, stick the stew in a plate, and you’re done.

By the way, some of your ancestors are now looking at you from the afterworld and seriously wondering if they can murderyou.

Because before tin cans, and tin cans were invented long before refrigeration, so that was also out, there were two ways to ensure the food you ate wouldn’t go bad in a few days.

Way number one?  Don’t make it until you were ready to eat it, and by “don’t make it” I mean, wait until the day before so you could slaughter the animals, carve them up, and prepare the meat. That was the reason for the great cattle drives and stock yards that are such a part of America’s history—you couldn’t ship meat, not and keep it edible, so you had to keep the cows alive. Sometimes you kept them alive until literally hours before the food was to be served.

The moment an animal was slaughtered or a fruit plucked from the tree, a very short timer started its countdown from “yummy meal” to “you’re gonna be sick.”

Way number two?  Heavily salted and dried meat, hard tack and other preserved foods that well… they were preserved. “Food” might be a term that not everyone would use. Beyond being poor tasting, the process of preservation leached many vital nutrients from the food, contributing to the health problems many sailors and explorers endured from eating nothing but hardtack and jerky.

Not only did this make life harder on bachelors, but it meant that society was far more vulnerable to famine than it is today. Without ways to store food for the long-term, even a short disruption of the food supply could lead to hunger and even starvation. During the winter months, many types of foot, mostly fruit, were more or less impossible to obtain, leading to nutritional problems during the long winter nights.

Lastly, and importantly to our story, the inability to preserve food made it very hard for your up and coming empire builder. Armies could only march so far before they outran their food supplies, and that meant foraging (which generally slowed everything to a halt) or putting an immense amount of effort into maintaining a supply line. But because food would spoil, there was a hard limit on how long any supply line could be.  An army could literally starve only a hundred miles or so from fields full of fruit trees.

So it’s not a surprise that in 1795 Napoleon Bonaparte offered 12,000 francs, courtesy of the French government, to anyone who could figure out a way to preserve food. And Nicholas Appart wanted that prize, so the Parisian figured out how to preserve food in glass containers by partially cooking it, sealing it in the glass, and then immersing the container in boiling water. Nobody knew about bacteria at this point, but Appart’s method eliminated them and kept his food fresh—and in 1810 he got his 12,000 francs.

Less than a year later, Peter Durand, a British merchant, was granted a patent for the canning process, using metal rather than glass, and soon vast amounts of tinned goods were being produced for the British Navy, improving the health of sailors world wide.

For homes, most “canning” used glass jars, and by the mid-1800s, there were specialized glass containers used for “canning” at home, preserving vast amount of fruit and veggies that could now be enjoyed year round.  The corner market started to swell with canned peaches, apples, just about anything  you could imagine—and that boosted the market for those far away states. Suddenly, the world was a bit more flavorful—and smaller, because now peaches weren’t this near mythical food that you might eat rarely—now you got the canned peaches at the corner store, whenever you wanted.

World building

So how does this impact the world you’re in?  Well, let’s just say, it can change everything.

If you’re writing in a world without cans or refrigerators, you’re writing in a world where preparing a meal can be a big deal. Feasts,  be they Sunday dinner or Christmastime, are big, big deals. Not only that, but some foods may simply not be available, especially in the winter. Since there’s no real way to preserve food quickly and easily, a town can go from feast to famine relatively quickly.  Travelers have to hunt for animals or forage for wild plants, unless they want to subsist on dried food that is barely worth the name.

For instance, the cooking pot with the beans that is a staple of many westerns—well, dried beans keep, and so does dried pork and that’s about the only thing you can take with you, unless you’re willing to hunt for your food. There’s a reason why the Bible talks about slaughtering the fatted calf—that’s a sign that you’re about to have a heck of a celebration.

So if you’re writing in the past, before tin cans existed, it changes how people eat, how celebrations occur—and gives you, the writer, an excellent way to signal that something big, for good or ill is about to go down. It also explains why everyone is going to the saloon every day. It’s not just the booze, but a kitchen that they keep running, and in fact, sometimes the free food is there to entice people to stay—and drink.

And lastly, if you’re hero is in a far away and strange land, it gives him something that he can use to change the world—without having to slay the demon emperor. Of course, this can have a mixed outcome. Remember why the French wanted canning in the first place…

The King raised his hand and Mike approached the throne, Ellendale by his side. Mike didn’t know what he had expected when he’d landed here. Maybe to get eaten by a dragon… But now, he’d met a beautiful girl, invented something everyone loved, the kingdom was a peace…

“Here me, Mike of Pasadena!” the King said. “You have banished the evil of famine from our kingdom, and now, these cans of tin will preserve our food for years.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Mike bowed.

“And for centuries, our old foes, the people of the Desert, have laughed, confident that no army could march on them, no army could pass the wastelands before they would starve. But now! Today!  That is no longer true! Rise, Sir Mike, and you will lead our armies to final victory!”  The King raised his hand. Everyone cheered, Mike stood still as a sword was belted around his waist.

And he only had one thing running through his head.

Well. Shit.