Canning of Tomatoes

Title: Canning of Tomatoes
Description: -- 'It was in this year and in the refectory building, that Harrison Woodhull Crosby, assistant steward, instituted the great industry of preserving vegetables and fruit in hermetically sealed tin cans. In September 1847, he made his first experiment. He secured six little tin pails, such as children play with on the seashore. For each of these he prepared a lid and cut a square hole in the centre. He then soldered these lids with the hole in them on the tops of the pails. He stewed tomatoes and put the fleshy parts into these pails, through the hole left in the lid. With a piece of tin larger than the hole he soldered the opening shut. So fresh and delicious were these tomatoes when he opened the pails the following winter, that he determined to preserve a large number of cans in the following year. He packaged a thousand cans. But the product was new and strange. Tomatoes in any form had but recently come into use as human food. He could not sell them. So packing them in boxes containing six cans each, he sent them to newspapers and various famous persons, including Queen Victoria, James K. Polk, then President of the United States, various Senators and Congressmen. Letters of acknowledgment, thanks and astonishment, as well as contemporary newspaper accounts,
Identifier: MR5
Date: 1847-01-01
Subject: Lafayette
Bibliographic Citation: Skillman, 1932