Year: 2018

Pectin was discovered by Louis Nicolas Vauquelin in 1790 but it took more than three decades for another French scientist named Henri Braconnot to isolate it. He discovered that it was the main component in fruit that was responsible for the congealing properties that enabled gelling when the fruit was boiled with sugar. Among his discoveries were that sugar was crucial to the gelling, as was the pH. It was also Braconnot who came up with the term pectin from a Greek word for congealing or solidifying.

The discovery and isolation of pectin made the production of jams and jellies more efficient, but the knowledge of how to make them had been around for centuries. Housewives routinely dealt with gluts of fruit by combining those fruits known for their gelling properties with other fruit with other non-gelling fruit to make jams and jellies. For example, crabapples have long been known to cause preserves to gel. Crabapples could be combined with other fruits like strawberries that had little pectin and thus little gelling ability.

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The use of gelatin goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, though it’s usage there seems to have been as an adhesive rather than a food. The same goes for ancient Rome, where Pliny wrote about using collagen-based fish glues. Gelatin’s first culinary applications were in 15th Century England. Made from boiled cattle hooves, gelatin dishes in this era featured meats and vegetables encased in aspic. Other medieval dishes that featured gelatin included fish jellies made with jellied eel stock.

A method to extract gelatin from animal bones was invented by a Frenchman named Denis Papin in the late 17th century.

Aspic would show up on European tables towards the close of the 18th century. The word’s origin may have had something do with the poisonous snake known as an asp, but that is uncertain. The aspics in 18th-century cuisine were savory jellies that encased savory ingredients much like the medieval versions.

In the middle part of the 19th century, an industrialist named Peter Cooper obtained the first patent for making a gelatin dessert. He never used the patent and instead sold it to a cough syrup maker named Pearle B. Wait in 1895. Wait made gelatin into a commercial food product with the addition of fruit syrup. Around this time, another gelatin maker named Charles Knox came up with a way to granulate gelatin. The first powdered gelatin was the result of his efforts. Before his work, gelatin came in large sheets that had to be soaked for long periods.

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Agar agar powder is often referred to simply as agar or agar powder. Another name for it is kanten, which is the name used for it in Japan. Legend has it that agar agar powder was discovered by an innkeeper in 17th century Japan who found that some discarded seaweed soup had gelled after being disposed of outdoors on a winter night. Over the centuries since its discovery, agar agar would become a popular ingredient in Asian food. Even though it was discovered in Japan, the name agar agar is Malaysian in origin and means jelly. It may have reached Malaysia via the Dutch as they traded with Japan and maintained an outpost in Malaysia for almost two centuries.

The seaweed used to make agar agar powder is called Gelidium corneum requires turbulent water and rocky seabeds to grow. It cannot be cultivated and must be harvested wild. Much of the harvesting is done by divers, though it is sometimes harvested when it washes ashore.

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