Text 1: The month we switched off the fridge, by Ben Ingleby

An original contemporary magazine article.

It started as a bet with my daughter, who had been doing a school project on energy. Could a family of four live for a month, in May, without a fridge? We emptied it, wedged the door open and pulled out the plug.

The first thing we learned is that our old house had been built for this. Under the stairs there is a pantry on the north wall with a stone floor and an air brick, and it stays at about eleven degrees even on a warm day. It was useful for potatoes and onions, but the thermometer soon showed us that eleven degrees was no substitute for a fridge for foods labelled keep refrigerated.

Milk was the problem. We tried a clay pot standing in a bowl of water, wrapped in a wet tea towel, which cooled by evaporation, but our thermometer showed it was not cold enough for safe milk storage. We gave up that idea and bought small cartons of long-life milk, opening only what we could use at once.

Meat and fish went straight from the shop’s chilled cabinet to our kitchen for immediate cooking, so we planned meals properly for the first time in years. My wife pickled cucumbers and onions, and we ate a lot of lentils. When a warm spell arrived in the third week, a bag of salad turned to slime overnight, and we threw away more than we had expected.

We switched the fridge back on after thirty-one days. But we waste less food now, because we have learned to buy only what we need.

Text 2: On the management of the larder, by Mrs E. Fairbairn

An original household guidebook written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

Text 2 is from a guidebook for housewives published in the 1880s.

No part of the house deserves more care from the mistress than the larder, for a bad larder will spoil the best of provisions in a single summer’s day.

The larder should, if possible, face the north, and its window should be fitted not with glass but with perforated zinc, which admits the air and keeps out the flies. The shelves should be of slate or stone, which keep cool, and should be wiped every morning with a cloth wrung out in vinegar and water.

Joints of meat must be hung upon hooks from the ceiling, never laid upon a dish, and should not touch one another. In hot weather a wire meat-safe is indispensable. Milk should be set in wide, shallow pans and, in summer, scalded each evening, or it will be sour by breakfast. Bacon and hams are best salted at home in the cold months and hung in the kitchen chimney to smoke.

Those who can afford it may take ice from the ice merchant twice a week in summer and keep it in a box lined with felt, but the prudent housekeeper will rather buy little and often, and will visit her larder every day to see that nothing is going bad. Food that is spoiled is money thrown away.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly how people kept their food fresh.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.