Science Meets Food Storage

When every American household had it own refrigerator, most thought that there was little more to improve on with year-round nutrition.  Refrigerated food kept longer and what couldn't be kept cool, could be canned.  What came next saved more storage, improved taste and increased the nutritious value of foods.

Clarence Birdseye was a naturalist and author of books on wildlife in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  While looking for a way to preserve his fish, he discovered something so successful that people assumed the name "Birdseye" was the product instead of the man behind it.

On a winter day in 1912, the temperature was 20 degrees below zero while Birdseye was fishing in Labrador waters.  When he pulled up a fish and dropped it on the ice next to his fishing hole, he noticed that it quickly froze solid.  Once he got home and put the fish in water, the fish started swimming! 

Birdseye discovered that because the fish's cells had frozen so quickly, there were no ice crystals formed which would have caused the break down of cells and have killed the fish.  When thawed, these ice crystals would have changed not only the tissue composition, but the taste as well.

Birdseye had just discovered that the quick freezing of food is based on the chemical principle that solutions or liquid crystallize, the size of the crystals is proportionate to the length of time of crystallization.  Sounds complicated? 

It's not!...next time
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On November 21, 1877, Thomas Edison announces the invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound.  The phonograph is one of 1,093 patents that Edison acquired in his lifetime...Rock and Roll never forgets!!