Then and Now: When Olive Oil Was Stored for Seven Years Underground

Yet much of what the magazine presented as good practice would be foreign to a modern extra virgin olive oil producer. In the southern region then known as Terra d’Otranto , the oil is kept for seven years in these caverns, without becoming rancid. – Scientific American, 1853 The article described Italy as one of the great centers of olive oil production and focused particularly on Gallipoli. Going to the magazine, olives intended for the best oil were allowed to become “fully ripe,” gathered mostly by hand and crushed beneath a single stone revolving in a circular bed.

The resulting pulp was packed into sacks and subjected initially to “very low pressure.” The first oil to emerge was described as “beautiful. Sweet,” the finest quality for table use and known simply as “salad oil.” There was no extra virgin category. Today, virgin olive oils are formally classified according to chemical and sensory criteria, and extra virgin olive oil must be obtained solely by mechanical or physical means under conditions that do not alter the oil. Scientific American set out that once the finest oil had been removed, the sacks of olive pulp were opened and a small quantity of boiling water was poured into each one.

The heat caused the pulp to swell and facilitated the flow of additional oil from the mass. AI-generated reconstruction of a June 4, 1853, Scientific American article “Olive Oil.” Modern olive oil mills bear little resemblance to that operation.

The magazine wrote that the first-run oil was transported “in skins” to reservoirs beneath Gallipoli. There, per to the article, olive oil could remain for seven years “without becoming rancid.” When it was eventually offloaded, it was carried from the caverns in skins and transferred into casks for shipment; sometimes it was shipped in the skins themselves.

Today, time is considered an enemy rather than an aid to olive oil quality . Extra virgin olive oil begins to change from the moment it is produced. In other respects, the world described in 1853 seems surprisingly familiar.

Scientific American complained that the popularity of olive oil in the United States had created ample opportunity for deception. “Owing to the great quantity of oil sold in our country as olive oil,” the magazine wrote, “there is much deception employed by the sellers of it,” adding that some products sold as pure olive oil were not olive oil at all. The problem they are intended to solve, even so, was already familiar 173 years ago. The article ended with another prediction that partly anticipated the industry’s future. “We believe that the olive could be cultivated with profit in our southern States,” the editors wrote, expressing hope that American producers would take up the planting.

The center of the modern United States olive oil sector would eventually emerge farther west, particularly in California , where mechanized harvesting, rapid milling and modern storage technology transformed a planting once processed with stone wheels and presses. Producers in 1853 were trying to extract the most desirable oil from the fruit, preserve it until it reached buyers and distinguish the genuine article from imitation. Archive: “ Olive Oil ,” Scientific American, June 4, 1853.