Clarence Birdseye proved you possibly can’t choose a ebook by its cowl.
The Brooklyn native and frozen meals pioneer regarded scholarly in his spectacles, as if he belonged on the head of a school lecture corridor.
He was in truth a school dropout. The slight, narrow-shouldered free spirit as an alternative lived a lifetime of journey. He explored distant areas of the world, from the frigid coast of Newfoundland to the steamy sugarcane plantations of South America.
Humble-looking ol’ Clarence 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 finest identified for making frozen meals accessible to thousands and thousands of shoppers. (Courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
He raved about sherry-brined lynx and the “advantageous” style of gull gravy.
“I arrived by canine crew on the North West River,” he wrote in a single notably enthusiastic account of his carnivorous Canadian food regimen.
Birdseye ate something that walked, waddled, chirped, crawled, swam or slithered.
“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 way in which People 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 shoppers.
There’s probability 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 outstanding label within the frozen meals aisle of American and British supermarkets, owned as we speak by worldwide powerhouse Conagra Manufacturers.
The attraction of frozen meals was evident in the course of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when shoppers stockpiled long-lasting sustenance for the unknown days forward.
The American Frozen Meals Institute reported $65.1 billion in retail gross sales in 2020, a 21% enhance over gross sales in 2019. Frozen meals stays purple sizzling, with $74 billion in gross sales in 2023.
‘An odd type of man’
Clarence “Bob” Birdseye was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 9, 1886, to legal professional Clarence Frank and Ada Underwood Birdseye.
His household moved to Montclair, N.J., when he was an adolescent. Highschool cooking lessons there fueled his innate curiosity in meals.
Creator and meals historian Mark Kurlansky was impressed to write down about Clarence Birdseye after the inventor made appearances in lots of his different books. (Courtesy Anchor Books)
“On the age of 10 he was searching and exporting dwell muskrats and instructing himself taxidermy,” NPR wrote in a 2012 biography.
“He studied science in faculty, however needed to drop out for monetary causes. Pressured to assist himself, he joined numerous 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 instructed Fox Information Digital, “He was an odd type of man who had an impression on loads of various things, together with an enormous affect on American meals.”
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“He was a product of the commercial revolution and thought the whole lot, together with meals, ought to be industrialized.”
The creator was impressed to write down 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 shoppers 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 Thought About Frozen Meals” in 2014.
Birdseye’s pursuits and innovations prolonged far past meals, Kurlansky mentioned.
“Birdseye was a product of the commercial revolution and thought the whole lot, together with meals, ought to be industrialized.” — creator Mark Kurlansky
He patented the reflecting lamps generally used on job websites as we speak. 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, growing a course of to show sugarcane residue into paper.
Birdseye developed some 300 patents and innovations in his lifetime, Kurlansky mentioned.
None had extra impression on the nation, nonetheless, than his work in frozen meals.
Impressed by Inuits
Birdseye’s Eureka second got here throughout dog-sled expeditions throughout Labrador.
He seen that native Inuit fishermen harnessed the facility of wind and ice to flash-freeze their catch.
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“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 useless of winter saved their freshness so long as they have been held at a low temperature.”
The issue was replicating 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 educational group dedicated to cultivating inventors and innovators.
An Inuit man along with his catch of fish, Greenland, circa 1930. Clarence Birdseye was impressed to pioneer business frozen meals by watching Inuit fishermen. (Photograph by Hulton Archive/Getty Pictures)
“Birdseye, the businessman, noticed that the general public again residence 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 Common Seafood Corp. a 12 months later in Gloucester, Mass., to be close to one of many nation’s most outstanding and productive fishing ports.
He developed a course of that might quickly freeze fish and greens.
“Within the case of fish or meat,” the appliance said, “gradual freezing disrupts the cells of the animal tissue, with lack of the pristine qualities and flavors and fast deterioration after thawing.”
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)
His rapid-freezing course of ensured “the pristine qualities and flavors of the product are retained,” he wrote on a 1927 patent software.
Likelihood encounter modified meals {industry}
Birdseye desperately lacked capital, nonetheless, when an opportunity encounter with enterprise tycoon Marjorie Merriweather Put up modified his fortunes.
The encounter additionally 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 identified as we speak as Common Meals. She was a massively influential businesswoman.
Amongst different notable accomplishments, Put up constructed a mansion in Palm Seashore, Fla., within the Nineteen 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, at the least in line with firm legend.
Birds Eye model frozen chopped spinach. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
Particulars of the story are sketchy, writes Kurlansky in “Frozen in Time.”
What’s not disputed is the end result: Birdseye’s “firm was of apparent attraction to the Postum Cereal Firm. Common Seafoods had developed the concepts and know-how for a completely new meals {industry},” Kurlansky writes.
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“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 American shoppers.
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 technique of fast freezing imprisons all that just-picked goodness,” reads an undated advert for Birds Eye frozen peas. (Courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
He spent his closing days, after a lifetime of journey and innovation, battling a coronary heart ailment within the metropolis through 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 world food-industry empire.
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“At the beginning he might afford to spend solely $7 on tools, 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 Instances reported in his obituary.
“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”
“After his return 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 as we speak is a goliath of world shopper tradition, with $252.2 billion in worldwide income in 2021, in line with Polaris Market Analysis.
The corporate predicts international frozen meals gross sales to succeed in $389.9 billion by 2030.
Birds Eye frozen meals are a family in the USA. Founder and explorer Clarence Birdseye was impressed to pursue improvements in frozen meals by watching the Inuit fisherman of Labrador freeze their catch. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures; courtesy Conagra Manufacturers)
Birdseye “is credited with growing the standard of the American food 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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“As we speak, we particularly recognize that Birdseye’s course of, nonetheless mainly in use, preserves meals’s vitamins in addition to its taste,” mentioned the Lemelson-MIT Program for innovators.
To learn extra tales on this distinctive “Meet the American Who…” collection from Fox Information Digital, click on right here.
“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.”
