San Francisco has always been an arbiter of California culture, and this was as true a century ago as it is today. It’s home to its own specialty cuisine, as well as a unique variety of sourdough bread, the birthplace of steam beer, and its proximity to the Pacific Ocean has given San Francisco a well-earned reputation as a place to eat. where you can always enjoy delicious seafood. available, some very specific to the region, such as the Dungeness crab.

California itself is a vast agricultural state that supplies the rest of the country with fresh vegetables and fruits and, of course, is the largest producer of wine in the United States. What is less well known is that San Francisco played an important role in promoting food exports through canning at a time when it was not possible to refrigerate trucks and trains.

Canning and preserving food is something we take for granted now, and canned food is often considered inferior to fresh. But this was not always the case. The history of preserving food in cans or jars dates back to 1795 when the French army, at the urging of Napoleon himself, offered a reward to anyone who could devise a method of preserving food on long military marches. and campaigns. An inventor named Nicolas Appert came forward, who suggested sealing food in metal containers and then pasteurizing them by raising the temperature of the sealed food enough to kill any microorganisms inside. The system worked and was tested in a trial with the French navy in 1806. Appart took the prize in 1810.

By the early 1820s, canning had taken hold in New York and California, with Robert Ayars establishing the first American cannery in Manhattan in 1812. By 1888, Max Ams had invented double seams, creating the modern airtight seal. we know in canned food products today. It is the type of boat with a cylindrical body made of anodized steel, with the two ends joined by double seams. Therefore, the sealed can did not need to be soldered, which was often a source of lead contamination and poisoning.

Although canning was used by various military throughout the 19th century, it was done more out of necessity than because the food tasted better, and it took a while for the notion of canned food for sale in neighborhood grocery stores to take hold. It wasn’t until later in the 19th century that its use became widespread, especially in California, where fresh vegetables and fruits were available year-round. West Coast cooks generally viewed canned goods as inferior to fresh produce, but this began to change in 1916 when a San Francisco socialite and chef became an outspoken advocate of canning as a method of increasing the variety of foods available in daily meals.

Sarah M. Williamson was a wealthy single woman from San Francisco, born in 1878. By the time she was in her mid-thirties, she had a wide circle of friends that stretched across the continent; she knew all the important families west of the Mississippi. As such, her views were influential.

“Why ban canned goods?” he wrote in 1916. “Especially in this state, where the most delicious fruits, vegetables, and meats come in cans? Wonderful dishes can be made from cans,” he added. “People who haven’t experimented with canned goods, or who consider them unhealthy, make a big mistake. Most great foods can be had from cans. With canned peas, beans, and asparagus, you can make a perfect salad.” “Sliced ​​canned tomatoes also work well in salads. A can of oxtail soup used as a gravy broth transforms a second-day cut of meat into an elegant stew or roast a foodie would enjoy.”

Commercial canning was relatively new in 1916, and its commercial success could have gone either way. While California was a source for canned goods in the East, local chefs felt they were better destined for distant places where fresh food was simply not available. It was voices like Sarah Williamson’s that helped turn that perception on its head, and it was she who recognized that canned food was always preferable to stagnant food, in those early days before refrigeration, that had been left out too long. in the pantry.

Sarah Williamson had relationships with many famous people of her day. She discovered, for example, that Jack London, the famous writer, was very particular about the way he liked to cook rice, and she convinced Jack London’s wife to get rid of her husband’s favorite recipe, which she posted on a local newspaper.

Sarah Williamson is not a much-remembered figure in the 21st century, although she clearly played a role in San Francisco’s culinary history and may have had an effect on the evolution of taste and culture in California, promoting as she did in the second decade. of the 20th century, a technology then new but still viewed with suspicion by many housewives and, in fact, sometimes dismissed as unhealthy. The California of 1916 was just beginning to develop a modern sense of place, culture, and environment, and food canning would help make California a major exporter to the United States and even the rest of the world.