It is crucial that home cooks are preserving their foods in order to help prevent them from being spoilt by different conditions, such as a loss of quality, edibility and nutritional value.

When preserving, cooks are ensuring that the growth of bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms are not having an adverse effect on the taste of their home cooking, as well as this, food that isn't preserved can become discoloured.

Common methods of preserving include drying, canning, preserving in syrup, sugar crystallisation, food irradiation, and adding preservatives, some of these methods such as syrup preservation can also add extra types of flavour to your dishes.

Canning is a commonly used method of preserving and it can be essential when cooks want to impress guests they are eating together with, though it is imperative that food is sealed securely within the can, or foods can suffer from poor taste or the aforementioned discoloration.