Food Preservation - Test 6
B2 First · Open Cloze · Cambridge English First 2, Cambridge University Press
For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.
Keeping food for long periods (0) ___ time was historically a huge problem. This proved especially crucial (1) ___ times when agricultural production (2) ___ severely limited by weather or crop failure. People commonly used ice to keep food fresh but, of (3) ___ , ice itself melts relatively quickly. In 1858 an American, John Mason, invented a glass jar with a metal screw-on lid, creating a perfect seal and making (4) ___ possible to preserve food that would previously not have remained edible. Mason's jar is still (5) ___ use throughout the world. An even (6) ___ successful method for keeping food by canning it in metal containers was perfected between 1870 (7) ___ 1920 by Englishman Bryan Donkin. This preserved food beautifully, though the early iron cans were expensive, heavy and difficult to open. A breakthrough came in the 1880s with the development of lighter materials (8) ___ also enabled mass production of cans.
Food preservation
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