Refrigeration Essay

1055 Words3 Pages

Refrigeration is the process of cooling down a space or thing below normal environmental temperature. Food preservation is vital in today’s day and age. From the meats to the dairy, everything needs to be kept at room temperature, cold, or frozen. People even like to make themselves cold and frozen by using air conditioning. But, it does make you wonder “how” and “when”. How did refrigeration become such an important invention and how did people survive without it? When did our ancestors realize it takes the cold to keep their food preserved and looking fresh? We now have fridges that have an automated ice machine and touch screens. When did the world begin? This question and many others has yet to be answered. Some of the information on refrigeration as early has the stone age and ice age has sounded as more like theories than facts. Caves and even ice blocks seemed to be the best source of refrigeration/food preservation to keep their left over …show more content…

Sounds a little gross, right? But, pickling turned out to be a great preservation method for out ancestors. Vinegar is made from starches or sugars, you can usually find this in wine or alcohol. It is fermented first into alcohol and then goes through oxidation. Wines, beers, and certain ciders were usually made into vinegar. The most well known form of pickling that we know today are pickles. We see peppers that have been pickled in the grocery store and many other foods, but where did this all start? Pickling being one of the earliest forms of food preservation, not knowing exactly when it originated, started some time around 2400 B.C. by the Mesopotamians. The containers were typically made of stone or glass because vinegar could dissolve some metal. Since our ancestors were not the type to waste, they figured a way to use left over pickling brine, such as the Romans. The Romans would make a popular fish pickle sauce called

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