Have you ever wondered how frozen food came to be?
Focusing on fish, writer Mark Kurlansky explains the contributions of frozen food innovator Clarence Birdseye in an excerpt from Eater’s article “The Strange History of Frozen Food.”
As it turns out, the “technology” was already in place, and had been known for a very long time.
As a young engineer in Labrador, an eastern province in Canada, Birdseye often froze his catch after a day of fishing to keep it fresh. He learned this from the Inuit who would fish from holes in the ice and let it freeze instantly in the frigid temperatures, Mark Kurlansky writes in Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man. Birdseye noticed that when the fish thawed, it wasn’t mushy like other frozen foods he had tried before. This was around 1912.
“When he lived in Labrador, the food he froze for his family was really good — not like the frozen food that was available everywhere,” Kurlasky writes. “He realized that because it froze instantly, because it was so cold — that was the key to making frozen food good.”
That’s right: Kurlansky’s magnum opus about oysters was referenced in this space just last week. But today we’ll be consulting Kevin Gibson, not Kurlansky.
The Taste Bud: Good Seafood from the Freezer? Well Played, SeaPak
When I was a kid of maybe 11 or 12, my mother ordered fried clams at a seafood restaurant and let me try them. I loved them, and it prompted me to get a package of frozen clams at the grocery store shortly thereafter. I don’t remember what brand they were, but in summary, they sucked. Let’s face it, I’d had fish sticks from the store, so I shoul …
