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 shouldn’t have been expecting much. Suffice to say the Gorton’s Fisherman and I were never close friends.
Fast forward many decades, and I happened to come into possession of some seafood items by SeaPak Shrimp & Seafood Co. (which also sells frozen supermarket clams) in the form of shrimp scampi and shrimp spring rolls. After years of mostly ignoring frozen seafood, I was naturally skeptical. I also turned out to be dead wrong.
Photo credits: Kevin Gibson.
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Kevin Gibson has been a professional writer for more than three decades, having written about restaurants, beer, bourbon, sports, night life, music and plenty more. He has won numerous awards from The Associated Press, Society of Professional Journalists and Indiana State Press Association, among others, but can’t remember where he put most of them. In addition, he has written for publications like LEO Weekly, Bourbon+ magazine, Thrillist, Alcohol Professor, Louisville Magazine and many more, including various newspapers. When he’s not busy writing books or stories about Louisville, he’s likely hanging out at a brewery with his dog, Atticus.
