FOOD HISTORY: Philadelphia Pepper Pot Soup

Philadelphia Pepper Pot Soup is a thick, hearty soup, flavored by peppercorns and containing tripe, frequently other meats, eg. chicken, veal, etc. plus vegetables. There are almost unlimited variations in the way it can be prepared. The soup had its beginnings during the American Revolutiionary War. In 1777, the Continental Army failed to repulse the British advances and they now occuped Philadelphia. George Washington set up his armie's winter headquarters in Valley Forge, 20 miles from Philadelphia. The winter of 1777 was paticularly harsh, especially for the 10,000-12,000 American soldiers who were freezing in their ragged clothes, torn, worn out shoes, and who never had  enough to eat. On December 29, because of the absence of food, especially meat, which almost caused a mutiny, General Washington asked his cook to make a soup, " that will warm and strengthen the body of a soldier and inspire his flagging spirit." This was a tall order for the cook who had very little at his disposal. The only things available were some kitchen scraps of meat and vegetables and peppercorns. Fortunately, a local butcher donated some tripe and the cook prepared his soup using these ingredients, adding a lot of pepper for flavor.This hot, peppery soup warmed and refereshed the soldiers who went on, eventually, to route the British. While it can't be said that," This is the soup that won the American Revolutrion", it's contribution to that event cannot be underestimated. The soup, however, was not an American invention. It had it's roots in West Africa. West Africans brought their okra thickened "gumbo" soup/stew  preparation techniques and seasonings to the Carribean Islands when they were brought as slaves. The name "gumbo"is derived from several Southern and Central African Bantu Tribes terms for okra; guingumbo, grugombo, gumbo, etc. The Carribean Islanders transmuted these African "gumbos' into a spicy soup they called "Callaloo". Callaloo is ubiquitous all over the Carribean and varies according to available local ingredients but usually includes sea turtle which gives the soup a gelatinous texture that would have been mimiced by the use of tripe in the Pepper Pot Soup. Since two thirds of the American Army, at that time, were foreign born and many of these were African-Americans, it seems clear that the cook responsible for Pepper Pot Soup must, surely, have depended on his African roots for his inspiration. Sometime after the American Revolution this soup migrated into Pennsylvania Dutch country where it soon became, and still is, a mainstay in the diet of people in this region of the U.S.

FOOD HISTORY: Food Canning

In 1795, Napoleon Boneparte's troops were moving rapidly into Russia, where the Russians had stripped the countryside of most crops and food animals. Napoleon's troops moved the fighting front forward so rapidly that the the wagons supplying the soldiers fresh food could not keep up and the food would spoil in the time it took to finally reach the troops. Thus, the soldiers had to make do with the meager food items that were left in the counrtyside that they could manage to scavenge. Because of this, his troops were malnourished, always hungry and  not in the best fighting condition. Therefore, Napoleon who believed that, "An army marches on its stomach" and wanted to keep his army fed, had his government offer a cash prize of 12,000 francs to anybody who developed a reliable method of food preservation. In 1806, the Frenchman Nichaolas Appert conceived the idea of putting food in air tight glass bottles, corking them and found, after exposing them to sufficient heat, that the food prepared in this manner would keep from spoiling. Appert won the 12,000 franc prize that the French government offerred. While the Appert system worked, the fact that glass containers were used caused a large breakage problem, lessening the value of Appert's preservation system. However, in 1810, Peter Durand, an Englishman, took the food preservation  process further when he patented a method of sealing food in unbreakable heavy tin containers and heating them. Bryan Dorkin and John hall perfected the Durand method and opened the first commercial food canning company in England in 1813. This was them first introduction of canned food to the public. The men who developed these early canning methods must have intuititively used airtight containers and sufficient heating to preserve the canned food because it wasn't until decades later, in the 1860's, that Pasteur, the great French bacteriologist, explained cannings effectiveness in preserving food. Pasteur demonstrated that the growth of microorganisms caused food spoilage and that applying heat, sufficeint to kill these organisms allowed food to be kept without spoilage if the food was securely sealed from the air. In any case, with  the introduction of canned food, greater expansion of world-wide exploration could occur  (no scurvy and other nutritional defeciency diseases due to Mariners eating only dried, heavily salted, and not too nutritious food on their long journies) and with the increased provisioning of large armies with canned goods, the importance of canned foods became universally known. Thus, the demand for food in cans greatly increased. In 1812, Thomas Kennet emigrated from England to the U.S.  and established the first U.S. canning company in New York. Because early cans were so thick they had to be hammered open, can makers started to produce thinner cans. When cans became thinner, people looked to invent easy ways to open these thinner cans. In 1858, Ezra Warner, of Westbury Conneticut patented the first can opener, which was used by the U.S. military in the Civil War. From these beginnings, canned goods have made their way to every area of the globe to provide people with safe, nutritious food that can be stored for extended periods of time without spoilage.