Clarence Birdseye - A Man With A Vision

Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man by Mark Kurlansky,

Frozen food, many of us grew up eating it and many of us still do but when your taking something from the freezer - like frozen vegetables for example - have you ever looked at the package and wondered where it came from, how it started? Well I never did either until today, while watching an episode of Mysteries at the Museum there was a segment on Clarence Birdseye - I'm sure you can't guess where I'm going with this - that was very interesting.

Birds Eye Logo

So I thought I'd write a little about how Birds Eye vegetables came about. Clarence Birdseye was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 9, 1886, the sixth of nine children. Birdseye attended Montclair High School in New Jersey, and was briefly a student at Amherst College, dropping out sometime around 1908,  he then moved west to work for the United States Agriculture Department.

Clarence Birdseye

Between 1912 and 1915 Clarence Birdseye was in Labrador in the Dominion of Newfoundland which is now part of Canada. During his time there he was taught by the Inuit how to ice fish under very thick ice and extreme cold. However what's most important about this is that he discovered that the fish he caught when pulled out of the water froze almost instantly and when thawed and cooked tasted fresh.

With this observation he immediately realized that seafood being frozen during this time was not as good a quality as the fish of Labrador, which in turn got him thinking how this new found knowledge could be used. The journals which record these observations are currently held in the Archives and Special Collections department at Amherst College.

Birds Eye Vegetables

In 1922 Birdseye conducted fish-freezing experiments to freeze fish fillets with chilled air, then in 1924 formed his first company Birdseye Seafood which unfortunately went bankrupt due to lack of consumer interest. Determined to make this process work he developed an entirely new process for commercially viable quick-freezing: packing fish in cartons, then freezing the contents between two refrigerated surfaces under pressure. Birdseye created a new company, General Seafood Corporation, to promote this method.

He moved his new company to Gloucester, Massachusetts where his invention, the double belt freezer was used, marking the beginning of today's frozen foods industry. In 1929 the company was sold to C.W. Post of the Postum Company - which eventually became General Foods Corp. - who then founded the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company.

Birds Eye Vegetables

Clarence Birdseye continued to work with the company, further developing frozen food technology. In 1930, the company began sales experiments in 18 retail stores around Springfield, Massachusetts, to test consumer acceptance of quick-frozen foods. Consumers liked the new products and today this is considered the birth of retail frozen foods. The "Birds Eye" name remains a leading frozen-food brand.

Clearence Birdseye died in Manhattan, New York on October 7, 1956 at the age of 69. Just a little to think about next time your getting dinner and reach into the freezer.