Meet the American who cooked up frozen foods: adventurer and innovator Clarence Birdseye
Clarence Birdseye proved you possibly can’t decide a guide by its cowl.
The Brooklyn native and frozen meals pioneer appeared scholarly in his spectacles, as if he belonged on the head of a school lecture corridor.
He was truly a university dropout. And as an alternative of lecturing students, he lived a lifetime of journey in distant areas of the world, from the frigid coast of Newfoundland to the steamy sugarcane plantations of South America.
He craved the outside and liked searching.
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Birdseye, amongst many different quirks, possessed a voracious urge for food for harvesting and consuming something that walked, waddled, chirped, crawled, swam or slithered.
In his years of exploring Labrador, Canada, or working for the U.S. authorities within the American West, he trapped and cooked mice, chipmunks, porcupine, otter and rattlesnake, to call only a few of his uncommon edibles.
Clarence Birdseye, credited with some 300 innovations in his lifetime, is greatest recognized for making frozen meals accessible to hundreds of thousands of customers.
(Courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
He raved about sherry-brined lynx and the “wonderful” style of gull gravy.
Birdseye ate something that walked, waddled, chirped, crawled, swam or slithered.
“I arrived by canine staff on the North West River,” he wrote in a single notably enthusiastic account of his carnivorous Canadian eating regimen.
“And after thawing out, sat right down to one of the crucial delicious meals I ever ate. The pièce de résistance was lynx meat, which had been soaked for a month in sherry, pan-stewed and served in a brown gravy.’”
Birdseye’s eager style buds wound up reshaping the best way Individuals store, eat — and even plan for catastrophe.
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He based Birdseye Seafood Inc. in 1924, pioneering and patenting new methods to each flash-freeze and market meals for American customers.
There’s likelihood you even have frozen greens bearing his title in your freezer proper now.
A truck promoting Birds Eye Frosted Meals, date unknown. Clarence Birdseye based his frozen meals firm in 1924.
(Courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
Birds Eye — two phrases — is a distinguished label within the frozen meals aisle of American and British supermarkets, owned right this moment by worldwide powerhouse Conagra Manufacturers.
The enchantment of frozen meals was evident through the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when customers stockpiled long-lasting sustenance for the unknown days forward.
“The class rang in $65.1 billion in retail gross sales” in 2020, the American Frozen Meals Institute reported final yr — representing an unimaginable 21% improve over gross sales in 2019.
‘An odd kind of man’
Clarence “Bob” Birdseye was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 9, 1886, to lawyer Clarence Frank and Ada Underwood Birdseye.
His household moved to Montclair, N.J., when he was a teen. Highschool cooking lessons there fueled his innate curiosity in meals.
Frozen meals rang in $65.1 billion in retail gross sales in 2020 — an unimaginable 21% improve over 2019 gross sales.
“On the age of 10 he was searching and exporting dwell muskrats and educating himself taxidermy,” NPR wrote in a 2012 biography.
Creator and meals historian Mark Kurlansky was impressed to put in writing about Clarence Birdseye after the inventor made appearances in lots of his different books.
(Courtesy Anchor Books)
“He studied science in faculty, however needed to drop out for monetary causes. Pressured to help himself, he joined varied scientific expeditions that took him to distant locations, together with Labrador, the place he spent a number of years within the fur enterprise.”
Celebrated meals historian and Birdseye biographer Mark Kurlansky additionally instructed Fox Information Digital, “He was an odd kind of man who had an influence on quite a lot of various things, together with an enormous affect on American meals.”
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“He was a product of the economic revolution and thought every part, together with meals, must be industrialized.”
The creator was impressed to put in writing about Clarence Birdseye after the innovator made frequent appearances in lots of Kurlansky’s different works, together with his landmark meals historical past, “Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Modified the World.”
Clarence Birdseye was impressed to pursue improvements in frozen meals for customers after watching the Inuit fisherman of Labrador freeze their catch.
(Courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
Kurlansky wrote two books about him: “Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man” in 2013; and, for middle-school college students, “Frozen in Time: Clarence Birdseye’s Outrageous Concept About Frozen Meals” in 2014.
But Birdseye’s pursuits and innovations prolonged far past meals, Kurlansky mentioned.
“Birdseye was a product of the economic revolution and thought every part, together with meals, must be industrialized.” — creator Mark Kurlansky
He patented the reflecting lamps generally used on job websites right this moment. He helped the federal authorities fight Rocky Mountain noticed fever by displaying that it was transmitted to people via animals. Later in life, he additionally discovered new journey in Colombia, creating a course of to show sugarcane residue into paper.
Birdseye developed some 300 patents and innovations in his lifetime, Kurlansky mentioned.
None had extra influence on the nation, nevertheless, than his work in frozen meals.
Impressed by Inuits
Birdseye’s Eureka second got here throughout his dog-sled expeditions throughout Labrador.
He observed that native Inuit fishermen harnessed the facility of wind and ice to flash-freeze their catch.
“Recent meals was a really pressing downside in Labrador,” Birdseye wrote, in an oft-repeated account of his work.
“I discovered that meals frozen in a short time within the lifeless of winter saved their freshness so long as they have been held at a low temperature.”
An Inuit man together with his catch of fish, Greenland, circa 1930. Clarence Birdseye was impressed to pioneer industrial frozen meals by watching Inuit fishermen.
(Photograph by Hulton Archive/Getty Photographs)
The key was to duplicate the flash-freezing course of removed from the icy shores of the Canadian coast.
“Birdseye, the biologist, noticed that the fish have been frozen too rapidly for ice crystals to type and smash their mobile construction,” writes the Lemelson-MIT Program, an instructional group dedicated to cultivating inventors and innovators.
“Birdseye, the businessman, noticed that the general public again house would gladly pay for such frozen meals if he might ship them. He returned to New York and, in 1924, based Birdseye Seafoods, Inc.”
He arrange enterprise, now as Common Seafood Corp., a yr later in Gloucester, Mass., to be close to one of many nation’s most distinguished and productive fishing ports.
He developed a course of that might quickly freeze fish and greens.
Clarence Birdseye filed for U.S. Patent No. 1,773,079 in 1927, receiving it in 1930. His course of would quickly freeze fish and greens in order that “the pristine qualities and flavors of the product are retained.”
(U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace)
“Within the case of fish or meat,” the applying acknowledged, “sluggish freezing disrupts the cells of the animal tissue, with lack of the pristine qualities and flavors and fast deterioration after thawing.”
His rapid-freezing course of, although, ensured “the pristine qualities and flavors of the product are retained,” as he wrote on a 1927 patent utility.
Probability encounter modified meals {industry}
He was desperately missing capital, nevertheless, when an opportunity encounter with enterprise tycoon Marjorie Merriweather Put up modified his fortunes.
The encounter modified the worldwide meals {industry}.
Birdseye’s patented flash-freezing course of ensured that “the pristine qualities and flavors of the product are retained.”
Put up had inherited Postum Cereal Firm from her father in 1914. It’s recognized right this moment as Common Meals. She was a vastly influential businesswoman.
Amongst different notable accomplishments, Put up constructed a mansion in Palm Seashore, Fla., within the Twenties that she dubbed Mar-A-Lago.
Put up occurred to be crusing via Gloucester in 1926 when she found Birdseye’s frozen meals firm, a minimum of in keeping with firm legend.
The deal in 1929 gave Birdseye the sources wanted to carry frozen meals to the American client.
Particulars of the story are sketchy, writes Kurlansky in “Frozen in Time.”
What’s not disputed is the outcome: Birdseye’s “firm was of apparent enchantment to the Postum Cereal Firm. Common Seafoods had developed the concepts and expertise for a wholly new meals {industry},” the creator writes.
“Ultimately, Postum secured [Birdseye’s] firm for a report $22 million.”
The deal in 1929 gave Birdseye the sources wanted to carry frozen meals to the American client.
Birdseye improved well being of the industrialized world
Clarence Birdseye died on Oct. 7, 1956 at a house he saved on the Gramercy Park Lodge in Manhattan.
Clarence Birdseye launched Birds Eye Frosted Meals in 1924. “Our patented strategy of fast freezing imprisons all that just-picked goodness,” reads an undated advert for Birds Eye frozen peas.
(Courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
He spent his remaining days, after a lifetime of journey and innovation, battling a coronary heart ailment within the metropolis during which he was born.
He was lauded for his imaginative and prescient and skill to show his concepts conceived on the ice of Labrador into a global food-industry empire.
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“In the beginning he might afford to spend solely $7 on gear, together with an electrical fan, ice and salt.
Later, a good friend lent him the nook of an ice home to hold on his work,” The New York Tiimes wrote in its obituary of him.
“We will say that Clarence Birdseye has not directly improved each the well being and comfort of just about everybody within the industrialized world”
“After his return from [from Labrador], Mr. Birdseye started the experiment that led to the event of his [flash-freezing] course of. The event not solely introduced a fortune to Mr. Birdseye, however helped revive the Massachusetts fishing {industry}.”
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Frozen meals right this moment is a goliath of world client tradition, with $252.2 billion in income in 2021, as Polaris Market Analysis reported in June.
The analysis firm predicts world frozen meals gross sales to succeed in $389.9 billion by 2030.
Birdseye “is credited with growing the standard of the American eating regimen by offering high-quality meals for long-term preservation with out drying, pickling or canning,” proclaims the Inventors Corridor of Fame, which inducted the innovator in 2005.
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“Right this moment, we particularly admire that Birdseye’s course of, nonetheless mainly in use, preserves meals’s vitamins in addition to its taste,” proclaims the Lemelson-MIT Program for innovators.
“Actually, we are able to say that Clarence Birdseye has not directly improved each the well being and comfort of just about everybody within the industrialized world.”
To learn extra tales on this distinctive “Meet the American Who…” collection from Fox Information Digital, click on right here.
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