In the year 12, having reason to hope that I should be employed to provide some nourishing provisions for the sick on board his majesty’s vessels, in consequence of some experiments which had already been made in the sea-ports, by order of his Excellency the Minister of the Marine and Colonies, on alimentary productions preserved according to my method; I made the necessary arrangement for fulfilling the orders I had reason to expect. In consequence, that I might not want too many bottles and jars, and that I might be able to condense the substance of eight messes in a bottle of the size of one litre, I made the following experiment. As, in general, evaporation cannot take place, but at the expence of the object to be condensed,[I] I made some gravy, in the proportion of two pounds of good meat and poultry to one litre. My gravy being made, and strained and suffered to become cool, I put it in bottles. After having well corked, and tied the bottles and wrapped them in bags, I placed them in the boiler. I had taken out, when one quarter dressed, the best pieces of the beef and poultry. When these were grown cold, I put them in jars, and filled the jars with the same gravy. Having well corked, luted, tied and wrapped up these jars, I set them upright in the same boiler with the bottles of gravy. Having filled the boiler with cold water up to the rim of the bottles and jars, and having covered the lid of the boiler with a wet linen cloth, I heated the water-bath. When it was made to boil I kept up the same degree of heat for two hours, and completed this operation as I did the preceding.

The beef and fowls were found well dressed, and were kept, as well as the gravy, for more than two years.