How did fruit transported from colonies to the capitals during the colonial era stay fresh enough during shipping trips lasting months at sea?

Question

You often hear in history how fruits such as pineapples and bananas (seen as an exotic foreign produce in places such as Britain) were transported back to the country for people, often wealthy or influential, to try. How did such fruits last the months long voyages from colonies back to the empire’s capital without modern day refrigeration/freezing?

In: 7801

Answer 1

Fun topic! They put them in tin cans. It’s one of the first modern preservation methods for fruit and worked for overseas production very well. You’d grow fruits on plantations and build a cannery in the harbor. Fresh fruit would either get put in sugar or pasteurised and put in a tin can to be shipped across the sea. It was much easier to do then refrigeration and retained more of the original fruit character then drying the fruits, which was a more low tech alternative.