Journal articles on the topic 'Food preservation canning'

“Foodways” generally refers to the “study of what, how, and why we eat with emphasis on food events as much as the food itself,” according to Lexicon of Food.1 Canning is definitely a “food event.” I recall watching my mother spend hours in the kitchen, tending large enameled pots full of Mason jars containing beets, tomatoes, dill pickles, and more. With that, I am pleased to introduce “From Farm to Pantry: Canning and Food Preservation Resources” by Deborah Lee. She has gathered a great list of items for any selector seeking to support both the budding home canner and academic programs in food science and foodways. This is obviously a topic that Lee is passionate about and she has helpfully broken the resources down into comprehensive guides to canning, “small batch” canning, specialized guides, and web resources. As this is my first column as editor of the Alert Collector, I would be remiss in not explaining what I hope to accomplish. I daresay it is not that different from past editors: to select topics that are useful to libraries of all types and which are timed to align with current events. I also hope to offer a wide range of topics. My first call for columns, sent out to several different email lists and posted online, exceeded my expectations with more than twenty topic ideas. I am grateful that my library colleagues are willing to contribute to a popular column.—Editor

The preservation of food by irradiation was hailed in the 1960s as a valuable addition to existing processes such as freezing and canning, but has since become a matter of controversy. While it is permitted in some countries it is forbidden in others. This article reviews the advantages and limitations of irradition, and weighs the evidence alleging hazards.

Image Analysis of Food Microstructure. John C. Russ. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL; 2005, 369 pages. ISBN 0-8493-2241-3Understanding food microstructure is fundamental to understanding the changes fresh fruit and vegetables undergo during development, postharvest, and during processing and preservation treatments, such as canning, drying, and freezing. Microstructure is also important in manufactured foods and in the development of new types of foods to give insight into the way in which ingredients respond when mixed with others and how they compete for space in a volume. Microstructure is important for food scientists because it gives rise to quality aspects, including texture, color, and palatability of foods. Finding innovative ways to examine food microstructure not only helps the fundamental understanding but also allows us to solve problems for industry when products fail.

Fish is a perishable food source, there the one processing need to be done with fast and right. Fish processing principle is basically aimed for protecting fish from decay and harm with extend to durable power. One of them by canning namely the form of processing and preservation modern fish to that are packaged in hermatik which then sterilized. Working method used is descriptive research with technique of data collection such as primary and secondary data with manner to active participation, observation and interviews. Practice Field Activity was held on January 14 to February 14, 2013 in CV. Pasific Harvest Banyuwangi, East Java. Fish canning process includes acceptance fish, tail and head fish cutting, fish filling, steaming, filling oil, closing cans, sterilization products, and incubation. Every stage the process of canning lemuru fish (Sardinella longiceps) have an important role on the quality of the fish canning. The results of the activities of Field Work Practice was the company has implemented the process of canning lemuru fish (Sardinella longiceps) in accordance with GMP and SSOP. Stages of the canning process can be fish cutting, fish filling into cans, steaming, provision of additional medium, closing cans and sterilization. The supporting factors this process is the feasibility of materials, smoothness canning tools, awareness of workers will be the task and cleanliness.

ABSTRACT Access to traditional Indigenous foods is a priority to improve food security and recognize the role of food in sustaining cultural and social connections. First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) is Canada's first province-wide, Indigenous-led health authority and delivers services in a community-driven manner. FNHA collaborated with First Nations to implement a Community Champion model, whereby each Nation could identify an individual who worked in food programming to attend a train-the-trainer workshop on safe food preservation methods. The Champions then took this knowledge, along with provided resources, to lead canning workshops in their home communities. Throughout the first year, a community of practice was nurtured, and a gathering of this community was held at the end of the first year. Nations were able to meet food safety considerations through interactive learning, and access to traditional Indigenous foods was strengthened. The Community Champion model supports capacity building and creates a community of practice.

Thermally-induced bacterial mutagens are formed when foods are processed by some commercial food preservation techniques. The processes which involve longer times and higher temperatures are most likely to produce mutagens (e.g., canning and evaporative concentration). Pasteurization and spray drying processes possess a low potential for creation of mutagens. The types of food products with the greatest tendency to contain mutagens following heat treatments are muscle foods such as canned meats and fish. Canned beef broth, chili, hash, roast beef, pink and red salmon, and mackerel contain substances which induce mutation rates up to 20 times higher than spontaneous revertant colonies in the Ames Salmonella mutagenicity assay. Using canned pink salmon as a representative product, reprocessing increased mutagen content, whereas addition of Maillard-browning reaction inhibitors led to significant decreases in mutagen formation. Even though thermally-induced mutagens can arise during household cooking (e.g., frying and charcoal grilling), the consumer can choose to minimize their production through use of lower temperature methods such as boiling, steaming or microwave heating. This option is not available to the consumer of commercially canned foods. Hence, further research into the reduction of mutagen formation during thermal processing is needed.

Thermal preservation using the canning method is a promising alternative for retaining the maximum quality of the foods. Recently, the rising awareness of the nutritional value of canned products has received the attention of various researchers, as canned food can offer both healthy and convenient solutions to consumers. The present study reported the nutritional values and presence of food additives and preservatives in different Ayam BrandTM canned foods in tomato sauce namely sardines (CS), mackerel (CM) and baked beans (CB), canned tuna flakes in water (CTF) and canned tuna in mayonnaise (CTM) compared to the fresh and home-cooked food samples. The canned products, CS and CM contain significantly higher (p<0.05) amounts of Omega-3 but are lower in protein compared to their fresh counterparts. The calcium compositions of canned sardines and mackerels are 10-fold higher than fresh and home-cooked, contributed by the soft and brittles bones which enriched with calcium. The nutritional values of canned products were maintained throughout the storage period throughout the span of 3 years, with insignificant changes (p>0.05). Regardless of canned or fresh food samples, there was no total dietary fiber, benzoic acid, sorbic acid and sulfur dioxide detected in all samples except for the dietary fiber in the baked beans. CS and CTM contained significantly (p<0.05) higher amounts of glutamic acid than their fresh counterparts and the glutamic acid in all canned products ranging from 0.001-0.37 mg/g which is within the acceptable daily intake of 13 g/day. The natural glutamic acid was contributed by the raw materials of fish and tomato sauces themselves. No MSG was detected in all canned products. Therefore, it is safe to consume canned food products that greatly representing fresh and home-cooked foods without compromising with the nutritional values

Objective. Studies demonstrate that people’s food and physical activity (PA) environments influence behavior, yet research examining this in rural communities is limited.Methods. Focus groups of 8–15 women were conducted in rural communities in seven US states. Questions were designed to identify factors within residents’ food and PA environments they felt helped or hindered them from eating healthfully and being physically active.Results. Participants were aged 30–84 years; mean (SD) = 61 (14) (N=95). On average, communities had fewer than 5,000 residents. Limited time, social norms, and distances from or lack of exercise facilities were common PA barriers. Facilitators for PA included social support, dog walking, and availability of affordable facilities. Healthy eating barriers included the perception that healthy foods were too expensive; calorically dense large portion sizes served at family meals; and frequency of eating foods away from home, which were perceived as generally unhealthy. Healthy eating supports included culture/value around local food gathering (e.g., hunting and gardening) and preservation (e.g., canning and smoking). Friends and family were frequently identified as key influencers of eating and PA behavior.Conclusions. Targeting both social and built environment factors, particularly those unique to rural locales, may enhance support for healthy eating and PA behavior change interventions.

ABSTRACT Canadian First Nations communities rely on traditional preservation methods such as the smoking, drying, and canning of fish and game meats to ensure long-term food security. Unlike commercial food production, there are no recognized official standards for these methods, rendering their efficacy in producing microbiologically safe foods relatively unknown. In this study, 81 fresh or processed fish and game samples obtained from four British Columbia First Nations communities were analyzed for quality indicator microbes, foodborne pathogens, and mineral levels. Aerobic counts, coliforms (CC), Escherichia coli (EC), lactic acid bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus (STA), and yeast and molds (YM) were enumerated using the TEMPO, whereas the presence of E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella were detected using the VIDAS immunoassay system. The opportunistic pathogens Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium were additionally detected using culture methods with subsequent PCR confirmation, and minerals (Ca, Cu, K, Mg, Mn, Na, and Zn) were detected using mass spectrometry. With the exception of STA, microbial loads were significantly (P &lt; 0.05) higher in processed fish and meat samples compared with unprocessed samples, and game samples contained higher microbial levels than fish; however, differences were only significant (P &lt; 0.05) for coliforms, E. coli, and STA. E. coli O157:H7 was detected in one smoked moose sample, and E. faecalis and E. faecium were isolated from 21 and 2 samples, respectively. Although smoked samples contained significantly higher Na levels, they were effective in reducing microbial levels. These results indicate that current food preservation methods practiced by British Columbia First Nations communities are infrequently effective at reducing microbial populations, and in many cases, resulted in increased microbial loads. More efforts should be made to improve the dissemination of safe food handling and processing knowledge to ensure long-term food security and well-being. HIGHLIGHTS

The globalization and industrialization of the agri-food system has been linked to declining knowledge and skills in the general population related to growing, preserving and cooking food. In rural communities, loss of this knowledge and associated culture and traditions has been further exacerbated by depopulation due to outmigration and the subsequent erosion of social and physical infrastructure. Counter to this trend of food deskilling, however, are the efforts of individuals who are actively working to maintain and perpetuate traditional food practices. The purpose of this research was to understand what factors motivate and enable the preservation of gardening, cooking and canning skills among a group of women and their children in a small rural community in Alberta. Qualitative research methods were used to gather relevant data, which were analyzed using a social practice theoretical lens. Findings from this study revealed four conditions influencing the continuation of these social practices among the research participants: the experience and history of scarcity; normative expectations; a close connection to family; and, development of a community of practice. This study illustrates the relevance of a social practice framework for examining food knowledge and skills, and points to the potential of this approach for understanding and promoting pro-environmental behaviour and sustainable consumption in the food system.

Food safety has become a major issue for producers and processors of fresh fruit and vegetable products. Although the safety of fresh and pre-cut fruit and vegetables is outstanding, several recent food-borne outbreaks have increased the public's awareness of microbiological hazards associated with these products. Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) programs are well-established for many food systems. HACCP is a systematic approach to the identification, assessment, and control of hazards associated with the environment in which foods are produced and handled. Fresh and pre-cut produce are ready-to-eat products that do not receive a preservation (heating) treatment like traditional canning or freezing methods. Since there is no microbiological kill step associated with these products, hazards cannot be eliminated. Therefore, it is critical that efforts be focused on minimizing the incidence of food-borne pathogens on fruits and vegetables through the use of good agricultural practices during growing, postharvest handling, storage, and minimal processing. Several sanitation hurdles can be combined in a synergistic effort to control food-borne pathogens. In addition to chlorination, researchers have investigated alternative treatments for sanitation such as ozone, hydrogen peroxide, trisodium phosphate, edible coatings containing antimicrobial agents, irradiation, pulsed light and bacteriocins. Selection of proper oxygen permeable packaging material is also important to prevent anaerobic conditions that may result in growth and toxin production by Clostridium botulinum. However, caution is advised when evaluating new sanitation and packaging materials for fresh produce, because the elimination of spoilage microorganisms may result in conditions that favor the growth of surviving pathogens.

Indonesia is rich in diversity of agroindustrial products. Yet the tropical climate causes agroindustrial products being easily damaged. Techniques for food preservation have been widely known such as drying, cooling or freezing, canning, chemical use and others. To complement these techniques, a promising unconservative technique using ionizing radiation can be safely used to preserve food, without leaving residual radiation or hazardous chemical residues. Unfortunately in Indonesia, the irradiation technique was still not common since few industries have used this technique. Compared to the neighbouring countries, only Indonesia as a big country had no interest in developing irradiator technology. To introduce this technique to the public, especially investors, BATAN in 2017 built a pilot project named as Iradiator Gamma Merah Putih (IGMP). It was designed with maximum activity up to 2 MCi using Cobalt-60 as radioactive sources and can serve from low to high dose. By the time, the number of agroindustrial customers, as well as their quantity to be processed, are increasing. The irradiation technique becomes an appropriate technology for Indonesian agroindustries. It is then necessary to build gamma irradiation facilities in areas that have large agricultural yields. This way can minimalize crop losses and increase the quality of the agricultural products.

Pesticides are one of the major inputs used for increasing agricultural productivity of crops. However, their inadequate application may produce large quantities of residues in the environment and, once the environment is contaminated with pesticides, they may easily enter into the human food chain through plants, creating a potentially serious health hazard. Nowadays, consumers are becoming more aware of the importance of safe and high quality food products. Thus it is pertinent to explore simple, cost-effective strategies for decontaminating food from pesticides. Various food processing techniques, at industrial and/or domestical level, have been found to significantly reduce the contents of pesticide residues in most food materials. The extent of reduction varies with the nature of pesticides, type of commodity and processing steps. Pesticides, especially those with limited movement and penetration ability, can be removed with reasonable efficiency by washing, and the effectiveness of washing depends on pesticide solubility in water or in different chemical solvents. Peeling of fruit and vegetable skin can dislodge pesticide residues to varying degrees, depending on constitution of a commodity, chemical nature of the pesticide and environmental conditions. Different heat treatments (drying, pasteurization, sterilization, blanching, steaming, boiling, cooking, frying or roasting) during various food preparation and preservation processes can cause losses of pesticide residues through evaporation, co-distillation and/or thermal degradation. Product manufactures, from the simplest grain milling, through oil extraction and processing, juicing/pureeing or canning of fruits and vegetables, to complex bakery and dairy production, malting and brewing, wine making and various fermentation processes, play a role in the reduction of pesticide contents, whereby each operation involved during processing usually adds to a cumulative effect of reduction of pesticides present in the material. There is diversified information available in literature on the effect of food processing on pesticide residues which has been compiled in this article.

Frozen berries have a number of undeniable advantages: they do not require additional preparation costs, are almost ready to eat, and most importantly, thanks to modern technologies, they retain almost twice as much nutrients as with other canning methods. Increasingly, there are risks associated with internal and external factors, as well as problems with excess yields that threaten not to sell the product fresh. short shelf life immediately after harvest, which increases the critical dependence on market prices. One of the progressive technological methods of processing fruit and berry products is quick freezing. The use of such freezing gives, first of all, a low degree of product damage, minimally reduces the biological value and taste characteristics, and the use of freezing does not significantly affect the quality of the thawed product.The main task of an industrial or commercial line for shock freezing of berries is to ensure almost instantaneous preservation of the product, which will retain all its nutritional value and taste. This is usually achieved by rapidly chilling the berries to -18 °C. By far the best option for extending the shelf life of freshly cooked food is to freeze it quickly. There are various options, but the best known is the freezing technology. For instant freezing without crystallization, it is necessary to provide a temperature of -5 ...- 18 °C. Experimental data were obtained during research. The temperature regime of storage of currants with the preservation of quality indicators using a freezing device is also considered. When frozen quickly, the berries should be blown from all sides or literally float in a stream of frosty air of the appropriate temperature. The duration of this process depends on the type and size of the berries, as well as on the intensity of the cooling air flow. The current direction in the field of research of frozen berries is the preservation of consumer properties of berries after freezing

Agaricus spp. mushrooms are edible fungi of commercial and medicinal importance. Mushrooms convert nutritionally valueless substances into proteinous food with a very efficient bioconversion. Consumption of mushrooms, has increased substantially due to their delicacy, flavour, nutritional and medicinal value, being considered an excellent source of protein, which can contribute to the formulation of a balanced diet. Three species of Agaricus spp. mushrooms were used in this study: Agaricus campestris (L. ex Fr.), Agaricus bisporus (J.E. Lange) and Agaricus blazei (Murrill). This study aims to examine the effects of blanching, soaking and manufacturing processes (sun drying, oven drying and canning) on some chemical constituents of mushrooms (soluble dry matter, protein and total sugars). The analyses were performed initially at conservation and they were repeated after 6, 12 and 18 months of preservation. Since all treatments caused reduction of the dry matter content, it can be concluded that the smallest decrease during the storage period was recorded by soaked and sun dried A. blazei (1.6 g 100 g-1 FM). The maximum soluble dry matter loss was recorded at blanched and canned A. bisporus (2.8 g 100 g-1 FM). Blanching treatment of preheated (sun dried and oven dried) samples, after storage period, led the protein content to slightly decrease, between 0.4 g 100 g-1 DM and 0.8 g 100 g-1 DM. The smallest decrease of total sugars during the storage period was registered by canned, untreated A. campestris with 1.2 g 100 g-1 DM and the largest decrease was registered by blanched oven dried A. blazei with 2.9 g 100 g-1 DM.

The urgency of more complete use of food blood of slaughter animals is due to the content of protein substances in it with a high digestibility of the organism, in terms of its content it can be equated to meat. However, the part of the processed and used blood for food purposes is only 3% by the meat processing industry. Using of the slaughter animals blood in concentrated form allows its use as one of the most important sources of animal origin protein and a number of other substances necessary for human being - fats, carbohydrates, enzymes, vitamins and mineral constituents. For partial canning and simultaneous increase in the content of useful components that make up the blood, it should be concentrated by the methods allowing maximum preservation of the entire complex of substances that make up its composition. A promising method is the concentration by moisture freezing. The concentration of cattle blood on a cyclic action plant was studied. Experimental data reflecting the change in the specific amount of freezed ice from the unit area of the heat exchange surface of the freezing plant and the loss of soluble substances contained in the blood removed from the frozen ice from the main operating parameters of the freezing plant were obtained. It was founf out that with a decrease in the average temperature of the plant evaporator wall, the specific amount of frozen ice from the blood of cattle increases monotonically nonlinearly. An increase in the initial content of dry soluble substances in the initial blood entering the concentration from 18.0 to 28.0% causes a nonlinear decrease in the specific amount of freeze-dried ice from the unit area of the heat exchange surface. It was noted that a decrease in the boiling point of the refrigerant in the evaporator of the freezing plant causes an increase in the dry matter content of the solution obtained by melting the frozen ice, and an increase in the blood flow of cattle washing the evaporator of the freezing plant, on the contrary, causes a decrease in the solids content in the solution obtained by the frozen ice melting.

It is revealed that in the Volyn region in recent years the volume of agricultural exports has been increasing, which enhances the raw material orientation of the region, which in turn may lead to negative ecological and economic consequences in the future. Agricultural products produced in the region provide foreign processing enterprises with raw materials that come back to us in the form of finished products. It is substantiated that by stimulating the development of domestic agriculture, the state and local authorities for some reason pay little attention to stimulating the development of integrated productions operating on domestic agricultural raw materials. The raw material orientation of the Volyn region leads to increased extensive agricultural activities, which in turn may impair the level of ecological and economic development of the region. Given the low prices of agricultural commodities on the foreign market, it is advisable to increase the volume of exports of agricultural products with higher value added (finished products). The expediency and the basic directions of economic stimulation of creation and development of complex productions for in-depth processing of agricultural products in this region are proved. The main advantage of the creation and development of industries from the full cycle of advanced processing of natural resources is the preservation and increase of the amount of added value, which will contribute to increase of financial revenues to the budgets of territorial communities and the state budget in particular, increase of profits of processing enterprises, increase of employment of rural population, etc. It is concluded that it is necessary to develop integrated production of in-depth processing of agricultural products in the Volyn region. In this regard, additional financial resources should be attracted, first of all, to restore the fallen ones of the 1990s. or underdeveloped processing units of the agroindustrial complex of the region – flax processing, fruit and berry and canning production, vegetable drying, oil and fat production, livestock complexes for pig and cattle production, production of biofuel and food digestion.

This study aims to determine the utilization of forests conducted by communities in forest area of Wolasi sub-district. This research was conducted in Wolasi forest sub-district of Southeast Sulawesi Province. The research methods used were survey and interview with 86 and 87 respondents with purposive sampling by plotting two different villages characteristics to represent forest utilization form in different area (villages in lowland landforms) and Aoma village (village has the shape of hilly terrain). The result of this study examining the forests utilization of inhabitants in Wolasi sub-district, which is represented by two topographic characteristics. Reseacher selected two similar conditions that engage the forest as a source of daily needs and workface that is considered as a resource, producing timber and non-timber products. Ranowila inhabitants occupations are dominated with farmers, while in Leleka village, despite being farmers, some inhabitants are craftsmen of non-timber forest products such as bamboo and rattan as well as furniture entrepreneur. This fact is influenced by residential areas that close to the forest and can be observed through the neighbourhood area which is close to the temporary forest area in Leleka Village. Temporary forest is located in an area which always extends land, since the topography circumstance encourages numerous people prefer to live closely towards their managed land. The forest is beneficial both in the term of land utilization or forest products,due to the distance there is limited knowledge,as well as limited work, it enhances low expenditure obtained. Keywords: Utilization, Forest, Community in District Wolasi References Adhikari, B., Di Falco, S., & Lovett, J. C. (2004). Household characteristics and forest dependency: evidence from common property forest management in Nepal. Ecological economics, 48(2), 245-257. Nurbaya & Efransjah (2018). The State of Indonesia’s Forests 2018. Jakarta: Ministry of Environment and Forestry Republic of Indonesia. Aryadi, M. (2012). Hutan rakyat: fenomenologi adaptasi budaya masyarakat. UPT Penerbitan, Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang. Banowati, E., & Sriyanto.(2013). Geografi Pertanian. Yogyakarta:Ombak. Cannon, C. H., Summers, M., Harting, J. R., & Kessler, P. J. (2007). Developing conservation priorities based on forest type, condition, and threats in a poorly known ecoregion: Sulawesi, Indonesia. Biotropica, 39(6), 747-759. Dudley, N., Schlaepfer, R., Jackson, W., Jeanrenaud, J. P., & Stolton, S. (2012). Forest quality: assessing forests at a landscape scale. Routledge. Gibson, L., Lee, T. M., Koh, L. P., Brook, B. W., Gardner, T. A., Barlow, J., ... & Sodhi, N. S. (2011). Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity. Nature, 478(7369), 378. Parrotta, J.A.(2015). The Historical, Environmental and Socio-economic Context of Forests and Tree-based Systems for Food Security and Nutrition. 1(3), 72-136. Pongtuluran, Y. (2015). Manajemen sumber daya alam dan lingkungan. Penerbit Andi. Silaen, A.P. (2008).Preservation of Forest and Environmental Functions Environmental Law Perspectives. 16 (3), 218-594. Suradi, S. (2012). Pertumbuhan Ekonomi dan Kesejahteraan Sosial. Sosio Informa, 17(3). Wagner, S., Nocentini, S., Huth, F., & Hoogstra-Klein, M. (2014). Forest management approaches for coping with the uncertainty of climate change: trade-offs in service provisioning and adaptability. Ecology and Society, 19(1). Wirakusumah, S. (2003). Mendambakan Kelestarian Sumber Daya Hutan Bagi Sebesar-Besarnya Kemakmuran Rakyat. Penerbit Universitas Indonesia. Jakarta. Cetakan Pertama. Copyright (c) 2019 Geosfera Indonesia Journal and Department of Geography Education, University of Jember This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share A like 4.0 International License

Background: The curd curry commonly known as kalan in Kerala and Gulab Jamun has been chosen in the present work which is relevant in accordance with its usage with common man. Kalan possesses a normal shelf of two days at normal temperature and room conditions. The present work attempted to preserve the product for two weeks or more at room temperature by applying canning technique. The shelf life of Kalan was proved to be enhanced to two more weeks with proper canning. Kalan is prepared in the laboratory and was packed in sterile bottles which were then sterilized by dipping in sterile hot water for thirty minutes. This process impairs the product sufficient sterility to enhance the preserving quality considerably. The product has been found unchanged in its flavor and taste after the expected expiry period. In the preparation of Gulab jamun,drying and frying strategies facilitates the removal of most of the contaminants and hence the product presented as sterile. The sugar syrup provides further preservation. This technique for preservation can thus become effective. The work presented an attempt that has been made to study the effect of processing / preservation technique.Methods: Canning technique was applied as a preservation strategy to the product kalan and addition of sugar syrup presented to be the preservation technique for gulab jamun. Both were considered as the natural way of preservation rather than utilizing any artificial strategies or additions. The shelf life of the same was studied in detail under physiological, biochemical and microbiological parameters.Result: The two food preservation techniques studied in this project are proved to impart better shelf life to the particular type of dairy based products without the addition of any preservative chemicals.

For thermal preservation of food, various types of retail polymeric packaging can be used: rigid, semi-rigid, flexible, and other kinds of containers. To make polymeric (plastic) containers usable for thermal sterilisation, and to ensure long storage of food, they should have a barrier layer that will make them heat-resistant, prevent oxygen ingress, and preserve the product’s quality and nutritive value. Every polymer material has its individual heat resistance characteristics. This paper considers such retail containers for food packaging as a composite can made of metal with a plastic lid and a semi-rigid heat-resistant polymer container with a foil cover. When using different container types for heat sterilisation and prevention of physical defects in cans, the following technological characteristics of cans should be taken into account: closure strength, depressurisation pressure, method of closure, diameter of a container’s opening, absence or presence of a stiffness relief on the cover, temperature of packaging, and other factors. The research includes analysis of existing types of retail composite and polymeric containers for canning food using different heat sterilisation methods. The theoretical and experimental research conducted has resulted in obtaining the values of the closure strength of the containers, an important parameter without which proper heat sterilisation of a product would be impossible. Developing scientifically proved parameters and modes of high-temperature sterilisation of meat and fish products in semi-rigid heat-resistant composite metal-plastic containers will allow enterprises to manufacture high-quality and safe canned food with high nutritive value.

I’ve always thought that I should have been a baker. The profession, as I imagine it, appeals to my romantic sense of the art: the thrill of being awake before everyone else with my fingers in a pliant ball of dough; the warmth of the baking ovens at my back, imagining, in between sips of espresso, the joy my fresh baked goods will bring the world as the people in it start their day. Destiny saw fit to set me on another path – that of tenure-track, assistant professor of American literature – and doomed my dreams of a baking career, along with the opportunity for any regular home cooking. With the exception of holiday and special occasion cooking, the nearest I come to my romanticised notion of being a baker is the seasonal session of jam-making. I choose jam-making over jelly-making because in making jam you utilise the whole fruit, as opposed to using only the juice of the fruit to make jelly. However, I console myself with the thought that it is now pointless for me, in this era, to wish to be either a baker or a jam-maker, since both jobs are far from my romanticised notions of them, having succumbed, for the most part, commercially, to the site of the factory and the industrialisation of the assembly line. In fact, why does anyone bother to make homemade jams when they can drive to the neighbourhood supermarket and buy a jar of it for less than half the price of what it might cost to make it at home? The answer to this question calls us to investigate the contemporary foodways of home fruit preservation and canning as they gesture to jam as a cultural sign system whose meaning surpasses mere physical nourishment. From the sixteenth century (when sugar became readily available to the general populace in Europe) until the Industrial Revolution, cooks “put up” seasonal fruits, as jam- and jelly-making used to be called, for three main reasons: in order to 1) enjoy them at other times of the year, 2) preserve an abundant harvest from going to waste, and 3) store them for possible future times of scarcity (see Wilson and Eden). However, with the Industrial Revolution came commercially prepared products at prices below the cost of the total ingredients for home preparation of such items (Hunter 140). In fact, cookbooks written and published after the mid-eighteen hundreds contain far fewer recipes for jams and jellies than previous cookbooks do, indicating the move away from home preservation of fruit condiments because of the ready availability of commercial ones (Hunter 140). By the twentieth century, it became simply unnecessary for homemakers to prepare jams and jellies at home. By this time, most Western countries offered consumers a year-round supply of fresh fruits (flown, shipped, or trucked in from somewhere else), as well as an array of choices in cheap, factory-processed condiments; and few households would have stockpiled jams and jellies to safeguard against food scarcity when agricultural subsidies by national governments guaranteed a surplus of production. So why is it that home canning, specifically the making of jams, has not disappeared entirely as a cooking practice? Its continued existence suggests that jam-making, as an art, has cultural symbolism beyond its mere preservation of fruit, and that a growing distrust of factory food products has provided a new rationale for jam-making at home, signifying it one of those “clandestine forms taken by the dispersed, tactical, and make-shift creativity of groups or individuals already caught in the net of ‘discipline,’” one of those “procedures and ruses of consumers [that] compose the network of an antidiscipline” (de Certeau xiv-xv). With the ready availability of jams at supermarkets, with no nutritional requirements of dietary sugar that require our daily consumption of it, and with no further need of it as a “travel” food (in its earlier history, jam was used to aid travel by sea without incurring scurvy, and as a food for military troops), the continued practice of jam-making in the home emerges in the twenty-first century with a different cultural identity. C. Anne Wilson, in her introduction to “Waste Not, Want Not”: Food Preservation from Early Time to the Present Day, identifies the apparent stakes in the continued practice of making jam at home when she states that freezing produce and making jam are probably the two kinds of preservation most often carried out at home. To some extent they link up with other present-day food trends, such as concern about the use of chemicals in growing and processing the factory-produced versions. Some of those who blanch and freeze their own vegetables have chosen to grow them organically in the first place because so many of the vegetables on sale in shops, whether fresh or frozen, contain the residues of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. (3-4) The stakes noted above by Wilson are part of a growing trend of resistance to industrialised process of food production. Another author in Wilson’s edited collection, Lynette Hunter, provides the historical context for reading jam-making as a form of cultural resistance. She states that Eliza Acton, a radical journalist, published her 1857 cookery book The English Bread Book as a way to take back control of bread baking processes; in other words, she wrote the cookbook “to address the problem of the adulteration of shop-bought bread by encouraging people to make their own” (141). Indicative of a large-scale historical shift in foodways, Hunter finds that Acton makes a similar argument about fruit preserving in her Modern Cookery book of 1868: Acton feels the need to make the same intentions clear for her section on preserving and scathingly criticises the ‘unwholesome [preserved] fruit vended and consumed in very large quantities’ by the shop-buying public. Acton’s stress on the ‘wholesome’ is a significant precursor of the direction that preserving recipes will take when they re-enter cookery books at the end of the nineteenth century. No longer can the housewife claim to be frugal when she uses preserving skills, but she can claim to produce more nutritious and healthy food. (141) Thus, Acton’s cookbook reveals a trend away from conceiving home preserving as a means to save money and toward viewing it as a healthier alternative to commercially produced preserves because the consumer maintains control over all steps in the process. However, in the twenty-first century, there is no nutritional need for jam-making in the home: contemporary proponents of healthy eating proclaim the nutritional values of fresh fruits, not those preserved in sugar, and marketing trends in jams reflect this with the advertisement of many “low sugar” or “no sugar” varieties. Hunter states that making jam at home appeals to cooks at the end of the twentieth-century because “there is the confidence of knowing exactly what has gone into the foodstuff: home preserving is the only sure way of evading major additives and of controlling sugar content, and so on” (153). However, with new varieties of low or no sugar jams available at this time, and with familiar brand names, as well as organic farms, producing organic lines of jam (many offering these for sale at local farmer’s markets or via the internet), Hunter’s argument no longer reflects a primary concern of the home jam-maker. Instead, consumers do not want a relationship with a faceless jar of jam whose conditions of production are beyond their control and whose ingredients and labour come from somewhere else. They want to maintain a relationship with their local landscapes. As Hunter writes, jam-making in the home permits us “to recognise quite precisely how the network of food distribution and supply, quality and quantity, changes from year to year” (153). The exchange of homemade foodstuffs may even suggest an economy of barter that thwarts the exchange of capital for goods. Thus, home jam-making in the twenty-first century breaks with earlier methods of this practice and comes to represent this contemporary historical moment. The practice of making jam at home is counterculture and radical if it seeks to resist the heavily advertised and marketed brand name jams and provide the consumer with a sense of agency and control over the processes of production. Although it may cost cooks more money and take more time than simply purchasing jam at the supermarket, every jar of jam they make themselves is an act of defiance, however small, because it refuses to put money into the pockets of multinational corporations. Here, to use the terms of Michel de Certeau in the Practice of Everyday Life, the consumer unmakes his own domination by developing practices of everyday life that “poach … on the property” of the corporation and factory owners. Making jam at home is one of the “‘ways of operating’ [that] form the counterpart, on the consumer’s … side, of the mute processes that organise the establishment of socioeconomic order” (xiv). Contrary to the romantic notion of baking with which I began this essay, where I imagine getting up early in the pre-dawn darkness to practice my craft, jam-making disturbs my sleep on the other end of the day: if I start a batch of jam at night after everyone is out of my way in the kitchen, I am frequently up until one or two o’clock in the morning with my fingers, hands, arms, apron, stove, and countertop coated with sticky smudges of jam, my face roasted from the heat of the hot steam coming off the liquid fruit and sugar mixture, and my stirring hand burned from its proximity to the rolling boil, imagining, as I sip my espresso, the joy my mattress and pillow would bring me if I were using them to sleep. Due to the amount of time, money, scrubbing, and lack of sleep associated with my late-night jam-making sessions, my relationship with homemade jam is a conflicted one; but one that I always manage to value whenever I offer a friend, neighbour, or relative a jar of homemade jam. This communal or social aspect of the place of homemade jam in gift-giving is perhaps one of the most enjoyable ways in which jam-making in the home thwarts global capitalism. References De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Eden, Trudy. “The Art of Preserving: How Cooks in Colonial Virginia Imitated Nature to Control It.” Eighteenth-Century Life 23.2 (1999): 13-23. Hunter, Lynette. “Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Trends in Food Preserving: Frugality, Nutrition or Luxury.” “Waste Not, Want Not”: Food Preservation from Early Times to the Present Day. Ed. C. Anne Wilson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991. 134-158. Wilson, C. Anne. “Waste Not, Want Not”: Food Preservation from Early Times to the Present Day. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Houston, Lynn. "Putting Up with “Putting Up”: A Cultural Analysis of Homemade Jam in the Twenty-First Century." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/06-houston.php>. APA Style Houston, L. (Dec. 2006) "Putting Up with “Putting Up”: A Cultural Analysis of Homemade Jam in the Twenty-First Century," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/06-houston.php>.

Introduction Many destinations promote culinary encounters. Foods and beverages, and especially how these will taste in situ, are being marketed as niche travel motivators and used in destination brand building across the globe. While initial usage of the term culinary tourism focused on experiencing exotic cultures of foreign destinations by sampling unfamiliar food and drinks, the term has expanded to embrace a range of leisure travel experiences where the aim is to locate and taste local specialities as part of a pleasurable, and hopefully notable, culinary encounter (Wolf). Long’s foundational work was central in developing the idea of culinary tourism as an active endeavor, suggesting that via consumption, individuals construct unique experiences. Ignatov and Smith’s literature review-inspired definition confirms the nature of activity as participatory, and adds consuming food production skills—from observing agriculture and local processors to visiting food markets and attending cooking schools—to culinary purchases. Despite importing almost all of its foodstuffs and beverages, including some of its water, Singapore is an acknowledged global leader in culinary tourism. Horng and Tsai note that culinary tourism conceptually implies that a transferal of “local or special knowledge and information that represent local culture and identities” (41) occurs via these experiences. This article adds the act of reading to these participatory activities and suggests that, because food writing forms an important component of Singapore’s suite of culinary tourism offerings, taste contributes to the cultural experience offered to both visitors and locals. While Singapore foodways have attracted significant scholarship (see, for instance, work by Bishop; Duruz; Huat & Rajah; Tarulevicz, Eating), Singapore food writing, like many artefacts of popular culture, has attracted less notice. Yet, this writing is an increasingly visible component of cultural production of, and about, Singapore, and performs a range of functions for locals, tourists and visitors before they arrive. Although many languages are spoken in Singapore, English is the national language (Alsagoff) and this study focuses on food writing in English. Background Tourism comprises a major part of Singapore’s economy, with recent figures detailing that food and beverage sales contribute over 10 per cent of this revenue, with spend on culinary tours and cookery classes, home wares such as tea-sets and cookbooks, food magazines and food memoirs additional to this (Singapore Government). This may be related to the fact that Singapore not only promotes food as a tourist attraction, but also actively promotes itself as an exceptional culinary destination. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) includes food in its general information brochures and websites, and its print, television and cinema commercials (Huat and Rajah). It also mounts information-rich campaigns both abroad and inside Singapore. The 2007 ‘Singapore Seasons’ campaign, for instance, promoted Singaporean cuisine alongside films, design, books and other cultural products in London, New York and Beijing. Touring cities identified as key tourist markets in 2011, the ‘Singapore Takeout’ pop-up restaurant brought the taste of Singaporean foods into closer focus. Singaporean chefs worked with high profile locals in its kitchen in a custom-fabricated shipping container to create and demonstrate Singaporean dishes, attracting public and media interest. In country, the STB similarly actively promotes the tastes of Singaporean foods, hosting the annual World Gourmet Summit (Chaney and Ryan) and Pacific Food Expo, both attracting international culinary professionals to work alongside local leaders. The Singapore Food Festival each July is marketed to both locals and visitors. In these ways, the STB, as well as providing events for visitors, is actively urging Singaporeans to proud of their food culture and heritage, so that each Singaporean becomes a proactive ambassador of their cuisine. Singapore Food Writing Popular print guidebooks and online guides to Singapore pay significantly more attention to Singaporean food than they do for many other destinations. Sections on food in such publications discuss at relative length the taste of Singaporean food (always delicious) as well as how varied, authentic, hygienic and suited-to-all-budgets it is. These texts also recommend hawker stalls and food courts alongside cafés and restaurants (Henderson et al.), and a range of other culinary experiences such as city and farm food tours and cookery classes. This writing describes not only what can be seen or learned during these experiences, but also what foods can be sampled, and how these might taste. This focus on taste is reflected in the printed materials that greet the in-bound tourist at the airport. On a visit in October 2013, arrival banners featuring mouth-watering images of local specialities such as chicken rice and chilli crab marked the route from arrival to immigration and baggage collection. Even advertising for a bank was illustrated with photographs of luscious-looking fruits. The free maps and guidebooks available featured food-focused tours and restaurant locations, and there were also substantial free booklets dedicated solely to discussing local delicacies and their flavours, plus recommended locations to sample them. A website and free mobile app were available that contain practical information about dishes, ingredients, cookery methods, and places to eat, as well as historical and cultural information. These resources are also freely distributed to many hotels and popular tourist destinations. Alongside organising food walks, bus tours and cookery classes, the STB also recommends the work of a number of Singaporean food writers—principally prominent Singapore food bloggers, reviewers and a number of memoirists—as authentic guides to what are described as unique Singaporean flavours. The strategies at the heart of this promotion are linking advertising to useful information. At a number of food centres, for instance, STB information panels provide details about both specific dishes and Singapore’s food culture more generally (Henderson et al.). This focus is apparent at many tourist destinations, many of which are also popular local attractions. In historic Fort Canning Park, for instance, there is a recreation of Raffles’ experimental garden, established in 1822, where he grew the nutmeg, clove and other plants that were intended to form the foundation for spice plantations but were largely unsuccessful (Reisz). Today, information panels not only indicate the food plants’ names and how to grow them, but also their culinary and medicinal uses, recipes featuring them and the related food memories of famous Singaporeans. The Singapore Botanic Gardens similarly houses the Ginger Garden displaying several hundred species of ginger and information, and an Eco(-nomic/logical) Garden featuring many food plants and their stories. In Chinatown, panels mounted outside prominent heritage brands (often still quite small shops) add content to the shopping experience. A number of museums profile Singapore’s food culture in more depth. The National Museum of Singapore has a permanent Living History gallery that focuses on Singapore’s street food from the 1950s to 1970s. This display includes food-related artefacts, interactive aromatic displays of spices, films of dishes being made and eaten, and oral histories about food vendors, all supported by text panels and booklets. Here food is used to convey messages about the value of Singapore’s ethnic diversity and cross-cultural exchanges. Versions of some of these dishes can then be sampled in the museum café (Time Out Singapore). The Peranakan Museum—which profiles the unique hybrid culture of the descendants of the Chinese and South Indian traders who married local Malay women—shares this focus, with reconstructed kitchens and dining rooms, exhibits of cooking and eating utensils and displays on food’s ceremonial role in weddings and funerals all supported with significant textual information. The Chinatown Heritage Centre not only recreates food preparation areas as a vivid indicator of poor Chinese immigrants’ living conditions, but also houses The National Restaurant of Singapore, which translates this research directly into meals that recreate the heritage kopi tiam (traditional coffee shop) cuisine of Singapore in the 1930s, purposefully bringing taste into the service of education, as its descriptive menu states, “educationally delighting the palate” (Chinatown Heritage Centre). These museums recognise that shopping is a core tourist activity in Singapore (Chang; Yeung et al.). Their gift- and bookshops cater to the culinary tourist by featuring quality culinary products for sale (including, for instance, teapots and cups, teas, spices and traditional sweets, and other foods) many of which are accompanied by informative tags or brochures. At the centre of these curated, purchasable collections are a range written materials: culinary magazines, cookbooks, food histories and memoirs, as well as postcards and stationery printed with recipes. Food Magazines Locally produced food magazines cater to a range of readerships and serve to extend the culinary experience both in, and outside, Singapore. These include high-end gourmet, luxury lifestyle publications like venerable monthly Wine & Dine: The Art of Good Living, which, in in print for almost thirty years, targets an affluent readership (Wine & Dine). The magazine runs features on local dining, gourmet products and trends, as well as international epicurean locations and products. Beautifully illustrated recipes also feature, as the magazine declares, “we’ve recognised that sharing more recipes should be in the DNA of Wine & Dine’s editorial” (Wine & Dine). Appetite magazine, launched in 2006, targets the “new and emerging generation of gourmets—foodies with a discerning and cosmopolitan outlook, broad horizons and a insatiable appetite” (Edipresse Asia) and is reminiscent in much of its styling of New Zealand’s award-winning Cuisine magazine. Its focus is to present a fresh approach to both cooking at home and dining out, as readers are invited to “Whip up the perfect soufflé or feast with us at the finest restaurants in Singapore and around the region” (Edipresse Asia). Chefs from leading local restaurants are interviewed, and the voices of “fellow foodies and industry watchers” offer an “insider track” on food-related news: “what’s good and what’s new” (Edipresse Asia). In between these publications sits Epicure: Life’s Refinements, which features local dishes, chefs, and restaurants as well as an overseas travel section and a food memories column by a featured author. Locally available ingredients are also highlighted, such as abalone (Cheng) and an interesting range of mushrooms (Epicure). While there is a focus on an epicurean experience, this is presented slightly more casually than in Wine & Dine. Food & Travel focuses more on home cookery, but each issue also includes reviews of Singapore restaurants. The bimonthly bilingual (Chinese and English) Gourmet Living features recipes alongside a notable focus on food culture—with food history columns, restaurant reviews and profiles of celebrated chefs. An extensive range of imported international food magazines are also available, with those from nearby Malaysia and Indonesia regularly including articles on Singapore. Cookbooks These magazines all include reviews of cookery books including Singaporean examples – and some feature other food writing such as food histories, memoirs and blogs. These reviews draw attention to how many Singaporean cookbooks include a focus on food history alongside recipes. Cookery teacher Yee Soo Leong’s 1976 Singaporean Cooking was an early example of cookbook as heritage preservation. This 1976 book takes an unusual view of ‘Singaporean’ flavours. Beginning with sweet foods—Nonya/Singaporean and western cakes, biscuits, pies, pastries, bread, desserts and icings—it also focuses on both Singaporean and Western dishes. This text is also unusual as there are only 6 lines of direct authorial address in the author’s acknowledgements section. Expatriate food writer Wendy Hutton’s Singapore Food, first published in 1979, reprinted many times after and revised in 2007, has long been recognised as one of the most authoritative titles on Singapore’s food heritage. Providing an socio-historical map of Singapore’s culinary traditions, some one third of the first edition was devoted to information about Singaporean multi-cultural food history, including detailed profiles of a number of home cooks alongside its recipes. Published in 1980, Kenneth Mitchell’s A Taste of Singapore is clearly aimed at a foreign readership, noting the variety of foods available due to the racial origins of its inhabitants. The more modest, but equally educational in intent, Hawkers Flavour: A Guide to Hawkers Gourmet in Malaysia and Singapore (in its fourth printing in 1998) contains a detailed introductory essay outlining local food culture, favourite foods and drinks and times these might be served, festivals and festive foods, Indian, Indian Muslim, Chinese, Nyonya (Chinese-Malay), Malay and Halal foods and customs, followed with a selection of recipes from each. More contemporary examples of such information-rich cookbooks, such as those published in the frequently reprinted Periplus Mini Cookbook series, are sold at tourist attractions. Each of these modestly priced, 64-page, mouthwateringly illustrated booklets offer framing information, such as about a specific food culture as in the Nonya kitchen in Nonya Favourites (Boi), and explanatory glossaries of ingredients, as in Homestyle Malay Cooking (Jelani). Most recipes include a boxed paragraph detailing cookery or ingredient information that adds cultural nuance, as well as trying to describe tastes that the (obviously foreign) intended reader may not have encountered. Malaysian-born Violet Oon, who has been called the Julia Child of Singapore (Bergman), writes for both local and visiting readers. The FOOD Paper, published monthly for a decade from January 1987 was, she has stated, then “Singapore’s only monthly publication dedicated to the CSF—Certified Singapore Foodie” (Oon, Violet Oon Cooks 7). Under its auspices, Oon promoted her version of Singaporean cuisine to both locals and visitors, as well as running cookery classes and culinary events, hosting her own television cooking series on the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, and touring internationally for the STB as a ‘Singapore Food Ambassador’ (Ahmad; Kraal). Taking this representation of flavor further, Oon has also produced a branded range of curry powders, spices, and biscuits, and set up a number of food outlets. Her first cookbook, World Peranakan Cookbook, was published in 1978. Her Singapore: 101 Meals of 1986 was commissioned by the STB, then known as the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board. Violet Oon Cooks, a compilation of recipes from The FOOD Paper, published in 1992, attracted a range of major international as well as Singaporean food sponsors, and her Timeless Recipes, published in 1997, similarly aimed to show how manufactured products could be incorporated into classic Singaporean dishes cooked at home. In 1998, Oon produced A Singapore Family Cookbook featuring 100 dishes. Many were from Nonya cuisine and her following books continued to focus on preserving heritage Singaporean recipes, as do a number of other nationally-cuisine focused collections such as Joyceline Tully and Christopher Tan’s Heritage Feasts: A Collection of Singapore Family Recipes. Sylvia Tan’s Singapore Heritage Food: Yesterday’s Recipes for Today’s Cooks, published in 2004, provides “a tentative account of Singapore’s food history” (5). It does this by mapping the various taste profiles of six thematically-arranged chronologically-overlapping sections, from the heritage of British colonialism, to the uptake of American and Russia foods in the Snackbar era of the 1960s and the use of convenience flavoring ingredients such as curry pastes, sauces, dried and frozen supermarket products from the 1970s. Other Volumes Other food-themed volumes focus on specific historical periods. Cecilia Leong-Salobir’s Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire discusses the “unique hybrid” (1) cuisine of British expatriates in Singapore from 1858 to 1963. In 2009, the National Museum of Singapore produced the moving Wong Hong Suen’s Wartime Kitchen: Food and Eating in Singapore 1942–1950. This details the resilience and adaptability of both diners and cooks during the Japanese Occupation and in post-war Singapore, when shortages stimulated creativity. There is a centenary history of the Cold Storage company which shipped frozen foods all over south east Asia (Boon) and location-based studies such as Annette Tan’s Savour Chinatown: Stories Memories & Recipes. Tan interviewed hawkers, chefs and restaurant owners, working from this information to write both the book’s recipes and reflect on Chinatown’s culinary history. Food culture also features in (although it is not the main focus) more general book-length studies such as educational texts such as Chew Yen Fook’s The Magic of Singapore and Melanie Guile’s Culture in Singapore (2000). Works that navigate both spaces (of Singaporean culture more generally and its foodways) such Lily Kong’s Singapore Hawker Centres: People, Places, Food, provide an consistent narrative of food in Singapore, stressing its multicultural flavours that can be enjoyed from eateries ranging from hawker stalls to high-end restaurants that, interestingly, that agrees with that promulgated in the food writing discussed above. Food Memoirs and Blogs Many of these narratives include personal material, drawing on the author’s own food experiences and taste memories. This approach is fully developed in the food memoir, a growing sub-genre of Singapore food writing. While memoirs by expatriate Singaporeans such as Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan’s A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, produced by major publisher Hyperion in New York, has attracted considerable international attention, it presents a story of Singapore cuisine that agrees with such locally produced texts as television chef and food writer Terry Tan’s Stir-fried and Not Shaken: A Nostalgic Trip Down Singapore’s Memory Lane and the food memoir of the Singaporean chef credited with introducing fine Malay dining to Singapore, Aziza Ali’s Sambal Days, Kampong Cuisine, published in Singapore in 2013 with the support of the National Heritage Board. All these memoirs are currently available in Singapore in both bookshops and a number of museums and other attractions. While underscoring the historical and cultural value of these foods, all describe the unique flavours of Singaporean cuisine and its deliciousness. A number of prominent Singapore food bloggers are featured in general guidebooks and promoted by the STB as useful resources to dining out in Singapore. One of the most prominent of these is Leslie Tay, a medical doctor and “passionate foodie” (Knipp) whose awardwinning ieatŸishootŸipost is currently attracting some 90,000 unique visitors every month and has had over 20,000 million hits since its launch in 2006. An online diary of Tay’s visits to hundreds of Singaporean hawker stalls, it includes descriptions and photographs of meals consumed, creating accumulative oral culinary histories of these dishes and those who prepared them. These narratives have been reorganised and reshaped in Tay’s first book The End of Char Kway Teow and Other Hawker Mysteries, where each chapter tells the story of one particular dish, including recommended hawker stalls where it can be enjoyed. Ladyironchef.com is a popular food and travel site that began as a blog in 2007. An edited collection of reviews of eateries and travel information, many by the editor himself, the site features lists of, for example, the best cafes (LadyIronChef “Best Cafes”), eateries at the airport (LadyIronChef “Guide to Dining”), and hawker stalls (Lim). While attesting to the cultural value of these foods, many articles also discuss flavour, as in Lim’s musings on: ‘how good can chicken on rice taste? … The glistening grains of rice perfumed by fresh chicken stock and a whiff of ginger is so good you can even eat it on its own’. Conclusion Recent Singapore food publishing reflects this focus on taste. Tay’s publisher, Epigram, growing Singaporean food list includes the recently released Heritage Cookbooks Series. This highlights specialist Singaporean recipes and cookery techniques, with the stated aim of preserving tastes and foodways that continue to influence Singaporean food culture today. Volumes published to date on Peranakan, South Indian, Cantonese, Eurasian, and Teochew (from the Chaoshan region in the east of China’s Guangdong province) cuisines offer both cultural and practical guides to the quintessential dishes and flavours of each cuisine, featuring simple family dishes alongside more elaborate special occasion meals. In common with the food writing discussed above, the books in this series, although dealing with very different styles of cookery, contribute to an overall impression of the taste of Singapore food that is highly consistent and extremely persuasive. This food writing narrates that Singapore has a delicious as well as distinctive and interesting food culture that plays a significant role in Singaporean life both currently and historically. It also posits that this food culture is, at the same time, easily accessible and also worthy of detailed consideration and discussion. 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Acknowledgements Research to complete this article was supported by Central Queensland University, Australia, under its Outside Studies Program (OSPRO) and Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre (LTERC). An earlier version of part of this article was presented at the 2nd Australasian Regional Food Networks and Cultures Conference, in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, Australia, 11–14 November 2012. The delegates of that conference and expert reviewers of this article offered some excellent suggestions regarding strengthening this article and their advice was much appreciated. All errors are, of course, my own.

I miss the ferry to San Pietro, so after a long bus trip winding through the southern Sardinian rocky terrain past gum trees, shrubs, caper plants, and sheep, I take refuge from the rain in a bar at the port. While I order a beer and panini, the owner, a man in his early sixties, begins to chat asking me why I’m heading to the island. For the tuna, I say, to research cultural practices and changes surrounding the ancient tuna trap la tonnara, and for the Girotonno international tuna festival, which coincides with the migration of the Northern Bluefin Tuna and the harvest season. This year the slogan of the festival reads Dal Sulcis a Sushi ("From Sulcis to Sushi"), a sign of the diverse tastes to come. Tuna here is the best in the world, he exclaims, a sentiment I hear many times over whilst doing fieldwork in southern Italy. He excitedly gestures for me to follow. We walk into the kitchen and on a long steel bench sits a basin covered with cloth. He uncovers it, and proudly poised, waits for my reaction. A large pinkish-brown loin of cooked tuna sits in brine. I have never tasted tuna in this way, so to share in his enthusiasm I conjure my interest in the rich tuna gastronomy found in this area of Sardinia called Sulcis. I’m more familiar with the clean taste of sashimi or lightly seared tuna. As I later experience, traditional tuna preparations in San Pietro are far from this. The most notable characteristic is that the tuna is thoroughly cooked or the flesh or organs are preserved with salt by brining or drying. A tuna steak cooked in the oven is robust and more like meat from the land than the sea in its flavours, colour, and texture. This article is about taste: the taste of, and tastes for, tuna in a traditional fishing community. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork and is part of a wider inquiry into the place of tradition and culture in seafood sustainability discourses and practices. In this article I use the notion of a taste network to explore the relationship between macro forces—international markets, stock decline and marine regulations—and transformations within local cultures of tuna production and consumption. Taste networks frame the connections between taste in a gustatory sense, tastes as an aesthetic preference and tasting as a way of learning about and attuning to modes and meanings surrounding tuna. As Antoine Hennion asserts, taste is more than a connoisseurship of an object, taste represents a cultural activity that concerns a wide range of practices, exchanges and attachments. Elspeth Probyn suggests that taste “acts as a connector between history, place, things, and people” (65) and “can also come to form communities: local places that are entangled in the global” (62). Within this framework, taste moves away from Bourdieu’s notion of taste as a social distinction towards an understanding of taste as created through a network of entities—social, biological, technological, and so forth. It turns attention to the mundane activities and objects of tuna production and consumption, the components of a taste network, and the everyday spaces where tradition and transformation are negotiated. For taste to change requires a transformation of the network (or components of that network) that bring such tastes into existence. These networks and their elements form the very meaning, matter, and moments of tradition and culture. As Hennion reminds us through his idea of “reservoir(s) of difference” (100), there are a range of diverse tastes that can materialise from the interactions of humans with objects, in this case tuna. Yet, taste networks can also be rendered obsolete. When a highly valued and endangered species like Bluefin is at the centre of such networks, there are material, ethical, and even political limitations to some tastes. In a study that follows three scientists as they attempt to address scallop decline in Brest and St Brieuc Bay, Michael Callon advocates for “the abandonment of all prior distinction between the natural and the social” (1). He draws attention to networks of actors and significant moments, rather than pre-existing categories, to figure the contours of power. This approach is particularly useful for social research that involves science, technology and the “natural” world. In my own research in San Pietro, the list of human and non-human actors is long and spans the local to the global: Bluefin (in its various meanings and as an entity with its own agency), tonnara owners, fishermen, technologies, fish shops and restaurants, scientific observers, policy (local, regional, national, European and international), university researchers, the sea, weather, community members, Japanese and Spanish buyers, and markets. Local discourses surrounding tuna and taste articulate human and non-human entanglements in quite particular ways. In San Pietro, as with much of Italy, notions of place, environment, identity, quality, and authenticity are central to the culture of tuna production and consumption. Food products are connected to place through ecological, cultural and technological dimensions. In Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch’s terms this frames food and tastes in relation to a spatial dimension (its place of origin), a social dimension (its methods of production and distribution), and a cultural dimension (its perceived qualities and reputation). The place name labelling of canned tuna from San Pietro is an example of a product that represents the notion of provenance. The practice of protecting traditional products is well established in Italy through appellation programs, much like the practice of protecting terroir products in France. It is no wonder that the eco-gastronomic movement Slow Food developed in Italy as a movement to protect traditional foods, production methods, and biodiversity. Such discourses and movements like Slow Food create local/global frameworks and develop in relation to the phenomenon and ideas like globalisation, industrialization, and homogenisation. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in San Pietro over the 2013 tuna season. This included interviews with some thirty participants (fishers, shop keepers, locals, restaurateurs, and tonnara owners), secondary research into international markets, marine regulations, and environmental movements, and—of course—a gustatory experience of tuna. Walking down the main street the traditions of the tonnara and tuna are palpable. On a first impression there’s something about the streets and piazzas that is akin to Zukin’s notion of “vernacular spaces”, “sources of identity and belonging, affective qualities that the idea of intangible culture expresses, refines and sustains” (282). At the centre is the tonnara, which refers to the trap (a labyrinth of underwater nets) as well as the technique of tuna fishing and land based processing activities. For centuries, tuna and the tonnara have been at the centre of community life, providing employment, food security, and trade opportunities, and generating a wealth of ecological knowledge, a rich gastronomy based on preserved tuna, and cultural traditions like the famous harvest ritual la mattanza (the massacre). Just about every organ is preserved by salting and drying. The most common is the female ovary sac, which becomes bottarga. Grated onto pasta it has a strong metallic offal flavour combined with the salty tang of the sea. There is also the male equivalent lusciami, a softer consistency and flavour, as well as dried heart and lungs. There is canned tuna, a continuation of the tradition of brining and barrelling, but these are no ordinary cans. Each part of the tuna is divided into parts corresponding loosely to anatomy but more closely to quality based on textures, colour, and taste. There is the ventresca from the belly, the most prized cut because of its high fat content. Canned in olive oil or brine, a single can of this cut sells for around 30 Euros. Both the canned variety or freshly grilled ventresca is a sumptuous experience, soft and rich. Change is not new to San Pietro. In the long history of the tonnara there have been numerous transformations resulting from trade, occupation, and dominant economic systems. As Stefano Longo describes, with the development of capitalism and industrialization, the socio-economic structure of the tonnara changed and there was a dramatic decline in tonnare (plural) throughout the 1800s. The tonnare also went through different phases of ownership. In 1587 King Philip II formally established the Sardinian tonnare (Emery). Phillip IV then sold a tonnara to a Genovese man in 1654 and, from the late 18th century until today, the tonnara has remained in the Greco family from Genova. There were also changes to fishing and preservation technologies, such as the replacement of barrels after the invention of the can in the early 1800s, and innovations to recipes, as for example in the addition of olive oil. Yet, compared to recent changes, the process of harvesting, breaking down and sorting flesh and organs, and preserving tuna, has remained relatively stable. The locus of change in recent years concerns the harvest, the mattanza. For locals this process seems to be framed with concepts of before, and after, the Japanese arrived on the island. Owner Giuliano Greco, a man in his early fifties who took over the management of the tonnara from his father when it reopened in the late 1990s, describes these changes: We have two ages—before the Japanese and after. Before the Japanese, yes, the tuna was damaged. It was very violent in the mattanza. In the age before the pollution, there was a crew of 120 people divided in a little team named the stellati. The more expert and more important at the centre of the boat, the others at the side because at the centre there was more tuna. When there was mattanza it was like a race, a game, because if they caught more tuna they had more entrails, which was good money for them, because before, part of the wage was in nature, part of the tuna, and for this game the tuna was damaged because they opened it with a knife, the heart, the eggs etc. And for this method it was very violent because they wanted to get the tuna entrails first. The tuna remained on the boat without ice, with blood everywhere. The tonnara operated within clear social hierarchies made up of tonnarotti (tuna fishermen) under the guidance of the Rais (captain of tonnara) whose skills, charisma and knowledge set him apart. The Rais liaised with the tonnarotti, the owners, and the local community, recruiting men and women to augment the workforce in the mattanza period. Goliardo Rivano, a tonnarotto (singular) since 1999 recalls “all the town would be called on for the mattanza. Not only men but women too would work in the cannery, cutting, cleaning, and canning the tuna.” The mattanza was the starting point of supply and consumption networks. From the mattanza the tuna was broken down, the flesh boiled and brined for local and foreign markets, and the organs salted and dried for the (mainly) local market. Part of the land-based activities of tonnarotti involved cleaning, salting, pressing and drying the organs, which supplemented their wage. As Giuliano described, the mattanza was a bloody affair because of the practice of retrieving the organs; but since the tuna was boiled and then preserved in brine, it was not important whether the flesh was damaged. At the end of the 1970s the tonnara closed. According to locals and reportage, pollution from a nearby factory had caused a drastic drop in tuna. It remained closed until the mid 1990s when Japanese buyers came to inquire about tuna from the trap. Global tastes for tuna had changed during the time the tonnara was closed. An increase in western appetites for sushi had been growing since the early 1970s (Bestore). As Theadore Bestore describes in detail, this coincided with a significant transformation of the Japanese fishing industry’s international role. In the 1980s, the Japanese government began to restructure its fleets in response to restricted access to overseas fishing grounds, which the declaration of Excusive Economic Zones enforced (Barclay and Koh). At this time, Japan turned to foreign suppliers for tuna (Bestore). Kate Barclay and Sun-Hui Koh describe how quantity was no longer a national food security issue like it had been in post war Japan and “consumers started to demand high-quality high-value products” (145). In the late 1990s, the Greco family reopened the tonnara and the majority of the tuna went to Japan leaving a smaller portion for the business of canning. The way mattanza was practiced underwent profound changes and particular notions of quality emerged. This was also the beginning of new relationships and a widening of the taste network to include international stakeholders: Japanese buyers and markets became part of the network. Giuliano refers to the period as the “Japanese Age”. A temporal framing that is iterated by restaurant and fish shop owners who talk about a time when Japanese began to come to the island and have the first pick of the tuna. Giuliano recalls “there was still blood but there was not the system of opening tuna, in total, like before. Now the tuna is opened on the land. The only operation we do on the boat is blooding and chilling.” Here he references the Japanese technique of ikejime. Over several years the technicians taught Giuliano and some of the crew about killing the tuna faster and bleeding it to maintain colour and freshness. New notions of quality and taste for raw or lightly cooked tuna entered San Pietro. According to Rais Luigi “the tuna is of higher quality, because we treat it in a particular way, with ice.” Giuliano describes the importance of quality. “Before they used the stellati and it took five people, each one with a harpoon to haul the tuna. Now they only use one hook, in the mouth and use a chain, by hand. On board there is bleeding, and there is blood, but now we must keep the quality of the meat at its best.” In addition to the influence of Japanese tastes, the international Girotonno tuna festival had its inauguration in 2003, and, along with growing tourism, brought cosmopolitan and international tastes to San Pietro. The impact of a global taste for tuna has had devastating effects on their biomass. The international response to the sharp decline was the expansion of the role of inter-governmental monitoring bodies like International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the introduction of quotas, and an increase in the presence of marine authorities on fleets, scientific research and environmental campaigns. In San Pietro, international relationships further widened and so did the configuration of taste networks, this time to include marine regulators, a quota on Bluefin, a Spanish company, and tuna ranches in Malta. The mattanza again was at the centre of change and became a point of contention within the community. This time because as a practice it is endangered, occurring only once or twice a year, “for the sake of tradition, culture” as Giuliano stated. The harvest now takes place in ranches in Malta because for the last three years the Greco family have supplied the tonnara’s entire quota (excluding tuna from mattanza or those that die in the net) to a major Spanish seafood company Riccardo Fuentes e Hijos, which transports them live to Malta where they are fattened and slaughtered, predominantly for a Japanese market. The majority of tuna now leave the island whole, which has profoundly transformed the distribution networks and local taste culture, and mainly the production and trade in tuna organs and canned tuna. In 2012, ICCAT and the European Union further tightened the quotas, which along with competition with industrial fisheries for both quota and markets, has placed enormous pressure on the tonnara. In 2013, it was allocated a quota that was well under what is financially sustainable. Add to the mix the additional expense of financing the obligatory scientific observers, and the tonnara has had to modify its operations. In the last few years there has been a growing antagonism between marine regulations, global markets, and traditional practices. This is exemplified in the limitations to the tuna organ tradition. It is now more common to find dried tuna organs in vacuum packs from Sicily rather than local products. As the restaurateur Secondo Borghero of Tonno della Corsa says “the tonnara made a choice to sell the live tuna to the Spanish. It’s a big problem. The tuna is not just the flesh but also the interior—the stomach, the heart, the eggs—and now we don’t have the quantity of these and the quality around is also not great.” In addition, even though preserved organs are available for consumption, local preserving activities have almost ceased along with supplementary income. The social structures and the types of actors that are a part of the tonnara have also changed. New kinds of relationships, bodies, and knowledge are situated side by side because of the mandate that there be scientific observers present at certain moments in the season. In addition, there are coast guards and, at various stages of the season, university staff contracted by ICCAT take samples and tag the tuna to generate data. The changes have also introduced new types of knowledge, activities, and institutional affiliations based on scientific ideas and discourses of marine biology, conservation, and sustainability. These are applied through marine management activities and regimes like quotas and administered through state and global institutions. This is not to say that the knowledge informing the Rais’s decisions has been done away with but as Gisli Palsson has previously argued, there is a new knowledge hierarchy, which places a significant focus on the notion of expert knowledge. This has the potential to create unequal power dynamics between the marine scientists and the fishers. Today in San Pietro tuna tastes are diverse. Tuna is delicate, smooth, and rich ventresca, raw tartare clean on the palate, novel at the Girotono, hearty tuna al forno, and salty dry bottarga. Tasting tuna in San Pietro offers a material and affective starting point to follow the socio-cultural, political, and ecological contours and contentions that are part of tuna traditions and their transformations. By thinking of gustatory and aesthetic tastes as part of wider taste networks, which involve human and non-human entities, we can begin to unpack and detail better what these changes encompass and figure forms and moments of power and agency. At the centre of tastes and transformation in San Pietro are the tonnara and the mattanza. Although in its long existence the tonnara has endured many changes, those in the past 15 years are unprecedented. Several major global events have provided conditions for change and widened the network from its once mainly local setting to its current global span. First, Japanese and global tastes set a demand for tuna and introduced different tuna production and preparation techniques and new styles of serving tuna raw or lightly cooked tuna. Later, the decline of Bluefin stocks and the increasing involvement of European and international monitoring bodies introduced catch limitations along with new processes and types of knowledge and authorities. Coinciding with this was the development of relationships with middle companies, which again introduced new techniques and technologies, namely the gabbie (cage) and ranches, to the taste network. In the cultural setting of Italy where the conservation of tradition is of particular importance, as I have explained earlier through the notion of provenance, the management of a highly regulated endangered marine species is a complex project that causes much conflict. Because of the dire state of the stocks and continual rise in global demand, solutions are complex. Yet it would seem useful to recognise that tuna tastes are situated within a network of knowledge, know-how, technology, and practices that are not simple modes of production and consumption but also ways of stewarding the sea and its species. Ethics Approval Original names have been used when participants gave consent on the official consent form to being identified in publications relating to the study. This is in accordance with ethics approval granted through the University of Sydney on 21 March 2013. Project number 2012/2825. References Barclay, Kate, and Koh Sun-Hui “Neo-liberal Reforms in Japan’s Tuna Fisheries? 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