Where there's smoke

Meat has long been preserved and flavoured by curing and smoking, and it’s surprisingly easy to do it in your garden, says Tim Maddams

- Tim Maddams

The first refrigerator in a form that we’d be vaguely familiar with was built in 1834 but, frustratingly for 19th-century homemakers, it wasn’t until 1913 that a man called Fred Wolf came up with a model for domestic use.

Up until that revolutionary moment, ways of preserving food were many. We all know about fish and meat being salted and dried, and vegetables and fruit being pickled in vinegar, but there were other more obscure methods.