Clarence Birdseye
and
Birds Eye Frozen Foods
Clarence Birdseye--photo courtesy of Henry Birdseye
"I do not consider myself a remarkable person. I am
just a guy with a very large bump of curiosity and a gambling
instinct."--Clarence Birdseye
Clarence Birdseye
Who was Clarence Birdseye? How did he inherit that unusual last name?
Clarence Birdseye, born in Brooklyn, New York was a naturalist, a
businessman, and a crafty inventor (Time Life Books Inc.). While Birdseye
had entertained an interest in plants and animals from his earliest days,
he became a businessman after realizing that as a student of Amherst
College he lacked the funds to complete his college education (Time Life
Books Inc.). He left school and entered into the fur-trading business in
1912 (Time Life Books Inc.). He would find himself on the Peninsula of
Labrador in Canada for the next five years (Time Life Books Inc.).
It was in Labrador that Birdseye made the simple discovery that would
revolutionize the frozen
food industry: poultry, seafood, and meats frozen in the bitter cold
of the arctic winter tasted better than those frozen in spring and fall's
milder
temperatures (Time Life Books Inc.). This process that Birdseye watched
the Eskimos use in the early 1900s later became known as the
process of quick freezing. Quick freezing is a process through
which items are frozen at such a speed that only small ice crystals are
able to form (Gale Research
Inc.). The cell walls are not damaged, and the frozen food, when thawed,
keeps it's maximum flavor, texture, and color (Gale Research Inc.).
Back in the United States again, the inventive Birdseye refined and
perfected a machine
called a "Quick Freeze Machine" that he unveiled in 1925
(Fucini and Fucini 170). Despite the revoultionary improvements that
Clarence Birdseye had made for the quality of frozen foods, public
distrust of frozen foods, based on previous experiences with food
frozen by the old process, would not yield to Birdseye's desire to
integrate his frozen foods into household
cooking(Time Life Books Inc.). Furthermore, the costs of building and
maintaining machinery caused Birdseye and his frozen foods considerable
distress (Time Life Books Inc.). Though not widely embraced, Birdseye's
foundation of the General Seafoods Company would make him a wealthy man
(Wallechinsky and Wallace 353). In 1929, the "Father of Frozen Food" sold
his company to the Postum Company (Wallechinsky and Wallace 353). From
this point on, the General Seafoods Company would be known as the General
Foods Corporation (Wallechinsky and Wallace 353). As a result of the
Postum Company's purchase of Birdseye's Seafoods Company, the Birdseye
name was kept a part of the company trademark, though it was split into
two words: Birds Eye (Wallechinsky and Wallace 353).
Clarence Birdseye was not incensed by this at all however, because the
family name had thus been returned to its original form (Wallechinsky and
Wallace
353). As the Birdseye Family Legend goes, one of Clarence's ancestors had
valiantly earned the name "Birds Eye" when he saved the life of an English
Queen by shooting an attacking hawk squarely through its eye (Wallechinsky
and Wallace 353).
Following the purchase of his Seafoods Company, Birdseye held the post of
president at two companies: Birds Eye Frosted Foods and Birdseye Electric
Company (4: 232). He continued to make advancements in the technological
world with inventions such as heat lamps, a procedure used for removing
the water content from foods, and by developing a way to create paper pulp
from crushed sugarcane residue (4: 232). He held almost 300 patents in
his lifetime (4: 232).
Clarence Birdseye revolutionized the frozen food industry. When his
foods were first released onto the market in 1930, the selection of
foods ranged from frozen peas, spinach, and and cherries, to fish and
several kinds of meat (General Reference Center Gold). Birds Eye has
brought us a long
way from the early quick-frozen food packaged between two refrigerated
plates to the
pre-packaged family sized meal to the boxed and bagged frozen food that we
are
familiar with from the
Birds Eye Company today (Gale Research Inc.).
My Sources
RETURN To
The Refrigerator Exhibit