A team of forty-five scientists at Britain's Royal Society, the UK's national academy of Science, ranked a shortlist of twenty of the most important innovations in the history of food and drink by their levels of accessibility, productivity, aesthetics, and health.  Refrigeration came out on top.

www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/the-h...

www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2...

The Royal Society Fellows, chaired by Sir Peter Williams, and including a Nobel Prize winner, noted that two of the top three discoveries came from Britain.  Artificial refrigeration was first demonstrated in Glasgow in 1748, and the tin can was patented in 1810 by a British merchant.

Following refrigeration at the top of the list were pasteurisation and sterilisation, canning, the oven, irrigation, the threshing machine, and baking.  Pasteurisation was, of course, discovered by French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur, whilst the use of the oven goes back to the ancient Greeks, and irrigation was practised in ancient Mesopotamia.

The threshing machine is also a British invention, from Scottish mechanical engineer Andrew Meikle in 1784, and baking can be traced back to the Roman Empire. 

Damn, fermentation only made #11...

That's just all stuff that's nice. The Greatest Invention in FOOD has to be meatloaf. And not with slimy gravy making a boggy mess of the whole thing, but the right way with catsup.

Eggplant has to be the worst.

We didn't have a refrigerator until I was six--1946. We had an ice-box and the iceman brought ice a couple times a week. In the summer he would chip off pieces to give to us. He had a horse and wagon.

We knew our milkman, bread man, and laundry man--my mother sent sheets and towels to the laundry. We always bought a pecan Louisiana coffee cake for Sunday on the Saturday stop. Our dairy was run by a family in our Catholic parish. (New York State was second only to Wisconsin in dairy production. NYS sharp cheddar cheese is still prized.)

Now I lug milk, bread and pastry from Publix !!! I am looking for a laundry to pick up my sheets and towels : they come back all nicely ironed (sheets) and folded.

Slice up some eggplant like one would a tomato. Make the slices about 1/4" thick, dip them in cornmeal and fry them at 325. Do the same with green tomatos.

Hard to beat.