The beginnings of preservation and sterilization techniques go back to ancient years. Aristotle recommended to Alexander the Great , his troops should boil the water before they drank it.
It is known that Hippocrates attempted to send the plague away from Athens by lighting fires in the streets and burning aromatic woods to disappear the plague-spots.
The use of high temperature to produce safe food products dates to the 1790s in France. Napoleon Bonaparte offered a prize to scientist to develop preserved foods for the armies of France. A man named Nicholas Appert won the prize for successfully preserving, for the first time, a variety of perishable food products by heat-processing foods in glass jars and bottles.
The technology is receiving increasing attention from thermal processing specialists to improve both the economy and quality of some canned foods.
Thermal sterilization of food in history
