What’s in your freezer? Gone are the times when most individuals’s fridges had solely ice cubes and perhaps some ice cream. Nowadays, most of our fridges comprise packets of our favorite frozen meals that style scrumptious and might be ready shortly. Many individuals deep fry these snacks or use an air fryer, usually within the evenings, for making fast and attractive frozen snacks like French fries, pizzas, hen nuggets, potato wedges, bao buns, momos, burger patties samosas, kebabs and many others. But have you ever ever thought of who got here up with this concept of frozen meals and the way had been these invented? Let’s dive into the fascinating historical past of the invention of frozen foods.

Ancient Techniques Of Preserving Food By Freezing

According to Fresh From The Freezer, the concept of freezing meals for preservation dates again so far as 3,000 BC. The historical Chinese used to protect meals by way of the chilly winter utilizing ice cellars. The historical Romans saved provides in underground chambers full of ice and snow.

Photo Credit: iStock

Inspiration For The Modern Frozen Food

The trendy approach of freezing meals has been round because the twentieth century, developed by Clarence Birdseye. According to Britannica, Birdseye went to Labrador, Canada, in 1912, the place he took up work as a fur dealer.

According to Frozen Food Europe journal, Clarence Birdseye noticed how the individuals in Labrador froze recent fish and meat shortly within the Arctic temperatures. The locals had found that freezing the fish this fashion saved it at its peak high quality and locked in its freshness. This helped them protect the fish, which was needed due to the problem of acquiring recent meals within the winter. This resolution spurred Birdseye’s creativeness to invent packaged frozen meals.
Also Read: How The Humble Popcorn Became The World’s Go-To Movie Snack

How Birdseye Invented Frozen Food For Retailing

Birdseye returned to the US, experimented with the freezing course of and found the way to freeze meals with out damaging the meals’s cells in order that it nonetheless tastes recent and scrumptious after defrosting.

According to the ‘Handbook of Frozen Foods‘ as shared by Eater, Birdseye positioned meals between two metallic plates at -13 levels Fahrenheit towards a low convection tunnel to flash-freeze the product. 

Britannica provides that although his weren’t the primary frozen meals, Birdseye’s freezing course of was extremely environment friendly and preserved the unique style of quite a lot of meals.

Exactly 100 years in the past, in 1924, Birdseye helped discovered General Seafoods Company. He then started efficiently promoting quick-frozen meals that made him rich.
Also Read: How Was Ice Cream Invented? A Scoop Behind the History Of Your Favourite Dessert

Rise Of Frozen Food Consumption In The US

The unique, flash-frozen meals included haddock fillets, 17 different cuts of meat and fish, spinach, loganberries and raspberries, shares Eater. The firm marketed June peas “as gloriously green as any you will see next summer.”

By World War II (1939 to 1945), canned items had been despatched to troopers abroad and Americans had been inspired to purchase frozen meals. Post-war, between 1945 and 1946, Americans purchased 800 million kilos of frozen meals, Mark Kurlansky writes in Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, shares Eater. By 1954, with the invention of the fish stick and the 98-cent TV dinner, frozen meals grew to become an American staple.