Clarence Birdseye’s Frozen Food Process Innovated an Industry

He began attending Amherst College in 1910 and majored in biology. But he left school to work as a naturalist for the U.S. Biological Survey (the college awarded him an honorary degree in 1941). In 1912, he was posted to Labrador as a fur trader. There, he observed native ways firsthand. Not only did the combination of ice, wind, and temperature freeze just-caught fish straight through almost instantly, but even more importantly, he found that when the fish were cooked, their taste and texture were scarcely different than fish eaten fresh.

He returned home and married Eleanor Gannett of Washington in 1915. A year later, he moved back to Labrador with his wife and first child. There, he advanced his observations and formed the basis for his later vocation. “‘Fresh food was a very urgent problem in Labrador,’” the Times article recalled him saying. “‘I found that foods frozen very quickly in the dead of winter kept their freshness as long as they were held at low temperature.’”

Dehydrating in Record Time

In 1949, Birdseye went on to develop the anhydrous method of taking water out of food, allowing it to be carried in cigarette-sized containers. In a Nov. 14, 1945, article, The New York Times quoted Birdseye telling guests at a luncheon demonstration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn: “‘The reason anhydrous produce has the flavor, color and aroma of fresh, when served, is because of the speed by which the water is removed. It takes an average of ninety minutes to extract the moisture from our fruits and vegetables, whereas ordinary drying processes require eighteen hours.’”

In 1953, three years before his death at age 69, he started experiments in Peru on a continuous flow process that could convert crushed sugar cane into paper pulp. Clarence Birdseye held nearly 300 U.S. and foreign patents in his lifetime.

Lori Valigra is a frequent writer for Food Quality. Reach her at [email protected].