The Man Who Abolished the Seasons
Napoleon is famous not only for his legendary military and political exploits but for his many profound and provocative aphorisms. One of the best-known sayings attributed to Napoleon is probably Une armée marche à son estomac (An army marches on its stomach). As it turns out, he may not have ever actually uttered the phrase; some attribute it to Frederick the Great instead. But Napoleon understood perfectly that a well-fed and amply supplied army was essential for victory, and as he spent most of his time trying to conquer Europe, he rightly prioritized the search for new means of feeding his enormous Grande Armée. At its height, he had more than half a million men under his command. His armies were forced to forage for their own food supplies while on campaign, which usually left the countryside devastated and soldiers underfed. In 1795, the Directory had offered a prize of twelve thousand francs to anyone who could manage to find better ways of food preservation; but as Napoleon’s armies traversed the lengths of Europe, the prize remained unclaimed.
The reward had piqued the interest, however, of a Frenchman who was already pondering a new process that would revolutionize food production and supply forever. His name was Nicolas Appert, and his discovery of a new means of food preservation irrevocably altered a central culinary assumption across the ages: that one must rely, for the most part, on foods that are local and in season. A nation that a mere century earlier marveled at the creation of early vegetables in the gardens of Versailles could now entertain the notion of eating fresh vegetables at any time, for years after harvesting, far from their original source. It was a radical shift in the human diet and a key step in the gradual industrialization of food production.
Appert was born in 1749 in Châlons-sur-Marne. His father owned an inn, which is where young Nicolas learned how to cook, and also how to bottle champagne. As an adult, he worked as a private chef for a noble family in Germany, before moving to Paris in 1784 and becoming a confectioner. He opened a shop on rue des Lombards, a street described as le chef-lieu sucré de l’univers (the sweet capital of the universe) by Grimod de la Reynière, the star gastronomic critic of the day. Confectioners not only sold sweets but also utilized some of the relatively limited methods of food preservation available at that time. Appert would have been expert in the preparation of syrups and jams as well as in the preservation of cherries and other fruits in alcohol.
Appert became obsessed with expanding the options for food preservation. All the traditional methods—smoking, salting, sugaring, alcohol—were expensive and changed the taste of the food, and they were not always completely effective to boot. In his initial experiments, he used champagne bottles (which were made more solidly than regular bottles to help contain the explosive force of the devil’s wine). The method he developed was simple enough: place the food in the bottle, hermetically seal it, and boil it in a bain-marie (a double boiler) for a set length of time (usually several hours). Et voilà, the food would remain preserved within the bottle for years. Appert did not precisely understand at that time why this process worked. It is only thanks to Louis Pasteur’s subsequent microbial discoveries that we now know that “appertization” essentially sterilized the food, killing the microorganisms responsible for decomposition. Nevertheless, because of his revolutionary invention, Appert is known today as the father of canning.
Appert first applied his method of heat sterilization to green peas. The pleasure the Sun King’s courtiers found in eating early peas could not compare to the astonishment of Appert’s guests, offered peas in December. As the Courrier de l’Europe later reported: “Monsieur Appert has discovered the art of fixing the seasons: in his home, spring, summer, and fall live in bottles, similar to those delicate plants that the gardener protects under glass domes against the intemperate seasons.”1
Appert started preserving foods on a larger scale in 1802, when he opened a small factory in Massy, in the Parisian suburbs. He planted a fruit and vegetable garden next to the factory so that he could bottle his produce as soon as it was picked, thus offering the freshest and healthiest product possible. Soon, his bottled foods were appreciated by the Parisian elite and newly prominent gourmands.
One of Appert’s key problems was that his bottles were expensive. This made his products exclusive, and therefore desirable, but like other food innovators at the time, Appert wanted his inventions to benefit humanity more widely. He thought his bottled foods would particularly benefit sailors, who at the time were still afflicted by scurvy and other deadly forms of malnutrition on their long voyages. In the prerevolutionary era, one out of twelve sailors died every year from disease.
In 1803, the French navy ordered some of Appert’s bottles so that they could be tested. The reports were very positive: one of them stated that after three months at sea, “the beans and the green peas, both with and without meat, have all the freshness and flavor of freshly picked vegetables.” But unfortunately for Appert’s ambitions, in October 1805, British admiral Horatio Nelson once again thwarted Napoleon’s grand schemes, crippling the French navy in the legendary Battle of Trafalgar. There would be no French invasion of England, nor a grand French fleet to rule the waves. Appert’s hopes of churning out bottles of vitamin-rich vegetables for the navy came to naught. He continually struggled to keep his business afloat.
In 1810, the government finally decided to award Appert the sum of twelve thousand francs, the equivalent of twelve years’ average salary, if instead of patenting his invention, he published a book explaining his preservation methods. Appert accepted the offer and published Le livre de tous les ménages, ou L’art de conserver pendant plusieurs années, toutes les substances animales et végétales. The book was intended to be of use for all households (tous les ménages), in line with Appert’s aims of helping ordinary people. As a businessman, he was an utter failure, but Appert wanted the world to benefit from his invention. The book was a rapid success in France and was eventually translated into other European languages as well.
Appert’s preservation method was more than just a way of offering fresh food year-round. Ideally, it would eradicate food scarcity entirely, because foods could be prepared and stored in anticipation of shortages. Large institutions—not only the navy and army but humanitarian organizations like hospitals—could better meet their food needs. He foresaw the rise of new food trades and industries, with countries able to import and export all sorts of local specialties. To a large extent, his visions did indeed come to fruition. While food scarcity is an enduring problem, today this is more a matter of politics and logistics rather than practical or technological problems.
Appert never really solved his bottle problem, and indeed it was left to France’s archenemy, the British, to invent a solution. In 1810, a new British patent was awarded based on Appert’s method of sealing and boiling, but using tin cans instead of glass bottles. From 1813 onward, the British navy supplied its ships with canned food. Appert could not immediately emulate this development, as his factory was destroyed by occupying troops in 1814. In the end, the Grande Armée never benefited from his marvelous invention. By the time Appert recovered and started canning food himself, the Napoleonic Wars were over. Britain took the lead in tin can manufacturing, so much so that when the French army and navy finally decided to extensively use canned food in the Crimean War (1853–56), most of the cans had to be purchased from British manufacturers.
Appert never managed to make a real success of his business, and in 1836 he retired. He died poor and was buried in a mass grave in 1841—hardly a suitable fate for someone whose invention so enormously benefited humanity. Today, Appert is barely known outside France, and he is not even really a household name in his native country either. It is an astonishing level of obscurity for someone who so radically expanded the limits of the human diet.