The father of frozen food
In 1908, H.K. Eames of Chico, Calif. operated the Chico Ice & Cold Storage Co. and offered farmers the facilities of his plant for storing their fresh meat. In 1917, Eames added another room with a chopping block and set of butcher’s tools, but the farmer had to do his own cutting, wrapping and placing of meats in the locker.
In 1912, Clarence Birdseye started a five-year journey around the Labrador waters in which he traveled by dog sled collecting furs for sale. During this period, Birdseye noted that duck and caribou frozen in the extreme cold of midwinter were better than those frozen in the spring or fall. He noticed how easily food was preserved in the arctic climate. He watched the Eskimos’ simple quick-freeze methods, a process by which items are frozen at such a speed that only small ice crystals are able to form, and noted that quickly frozen fish retained flavor and texture better than fish frozen slowly.