History of cheese industry in United States

Cheese and butter factories were born in the United States a country with no cheese-making tradition, just 70 years after revolution.

When the Pilgrims voyaged to America in 1620, they made sure that the Mayflower was stocked with cheese. It came together with its cargo of goats.

Cheese making in North America and specifically in the United States, remained a farmhouse process throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 1841, Anne Pickett established Wisconsin’s first cheese factory. In 1851 an entrepreneur Jesse William had built the New York’s first cheese factory near Rome, Oneida County, New York and introduced production in a grand scale. He revolutionized commercial cheese making. The ‘factory’ was simply his farm. He had a reputation for making exceptional cheese, so his neighbors would send him their milk so that he could make cheese for them.

Williams regulated the timing as well as the temperature for converting milk to curds, regardless of volume. By combining the milk and producing large cheeses, he could achieve a uniform taste and texture.

During the early part of the year 1860, Samuel Perry, of New York City, a native of Herkimer, and one of the earliest operators in the cheese trade, endeavored to control the market, purchasing the great bulk of cheese manufactured in the country. In 1867, Robert McAdam introduced the English Cheddar system in a factory near Herkimer, New York. This introduction made Herkimer County famous for its cheese.

For many years during this period, the largest cheese market in world as at Little Falls, New York. By 1875 there were more than 500 cheese factories in New York State alone.

The industry moved westward, centering on the rich farmlands of Wisconsin, where the American cheese industry really took off.

In 1878, a German immigrant named Julius Wettstein started a cheese factory in Monroe, New York, where he produced a fine line of German, French and Swiss types that were traded over the entire length of the Erie Canal.
History of cheese industry in United States

History of hydrogenation process

Hydrogenation is conversion process of liquid oils to semi-hard fats by the addition of hydrogen to the unsaturated double bonds; used for margarines and shortenings intend for bakery products.

The earliest hydrogenation is that of platinum catalyzed addition of hydrogen to oxygen in the Dobereiner’s lamp, a device commercialized as early as 1823.

The French chemist Paul Sabatier is considered the father of the hydrogenation process. In P. Sabatier’s hydrogenation method a mixture of hydrogen and the vapor of an organic compound was passed over a metallic catalyst, normally finely divided nickel. In 1902 a German patent was granted for Sabatier’s invention.

William Norman, an English chemist, invented a method of saturating unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids thus preventing them from turning rancid.

In 1903 Norman patented the hydrogenation process. He patented the simple process of bubbling hydrogen through heated oil in which finely divided nickel was suspended.

It was then around 1911 that the artificial fat business actually began to take off. These artificial fats did not spoil and turn rancid as unrefrigerated natural products do.

From about 1913 Frederick Bergius worked out methods of hydrogenating substances by reaction with hydrogen under great pressure and without a metallic catalyst.

In 1922 Joseph L. Rosefield of the Rosefield Packing Company of Alameda, California, applied these principles to peanut butter. He developed a process to prevent oil separation and spoilage in peanut butter.
History of hydrogenation process

History of food canning

Canning a method of preserving food by sealing it in sterilized glass jars or metal cans was the answer to preventing food from spoilage while also preserving much of its taste, texture and nutritional value.

The use of canned foods dates back to Napoleonic days when a French candy maker, Nicolas Appert, conducted food preservation experiments by canning soups and vegetables in champagne bottles.

By the early 1800s, the French Navy carried bottled vegetables on their ships worth reportedly good result. Other than navies, explorer also using canned food for their journey.  One of the explorer utilized canned products was Otto von Kozebuem, who used them on his three-year voyage to the Bering Strait and South Seas in 1815-1818.

Soon after, a patent for canning in ‘bottles or other vessels of glass, pottery, tin or other metals or fit materials’ was granted to an Englishman, Peter Durant.

The French canned sardine industry developed form 1824, when Joseph Colin opened the first fish cannery.

In the late 1800s, Luigi Stampacchia received patent for a process using a double-action press to produce a ‘double-drawn’ can and the first ‘ironed’ was produced.

Can openers were invented until 1858, so early cans came with instructions: Cut around the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer. At the same year (1858), John Mason invented glass jar that still bears his name and home canning became feasible.

A US patent was granted in 1904 to James Rigby for producing cans with the wall thickness reduced by burnishing.

During World War II some food cans had wicks on them like candle. The wicks were attached to an inside tube. When soldiers lit the wick, the tube heated the food.

It was not until the 1960s that the first commercial beverage cans were produced by the drawing and ironing process developed in the 1800s. The introduction of the ‘easy open’ end in the early 1960s led to wide consumer acceptance.

Since 1959, when Coors Brewery made the first two-piece aluminium can, nearly all beverages cans, , as well as many similar types of food container are manufactured through the operation known as drawing and ironing.

In 1918, scientists developed a way to measure the rate of heat penetration into a can or jar. Finally they figure out that pressure canning at 240-250 ° F completely destroys the bacteria.
History of food canning