Who developed the technique of freezing food?

The first Individually packaged FROZEN FOOD.

The first Individually packaged FROZEN FOOD product to go on sale was haddock, retailed in 1 lb packs as Fresh Ice Fillets in Toronto by the Biological Board of Canada in January 1929–an unusual example of a government department going into the food processing business. The technique for freezing the fish was developed by Dr Archibald Huntsman of the Fisheries Experimental Station at Halifax, Nova Scotia, who had begun work on the project in 1926. The fresh fillets were frozen quickly between metal plates bathed with refrigerated brine, but the brine was never allowed in contact with the fish. Initially 600 lbs of Ice Fillets were shipped to Toronto each week, but this proved insufficient and the order was increased to 1000 lbs. Even this failed to satisfy demand, despite the fact that the frozen product was about 50 per cent more expensive than unfrozen. The premium was judged worthwhile by discerning housewives because the frozen fish tasted much fresher. Other varieties of fish were added to the range, including cod, halibut, russet flounder and grey flounder and grey flounder, mackerel, swordfish and ousk and shipments were extended to Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary and Prince Edward Island. Once the experiment was shown to be a success, the Biological Board began licensing food processors to undertake production on their own account, the first two, in the spring of 1929, being Lunenburg Sea Products and the Locke port Co. This pioneering Canadian venture was confined to fish. The man usually credited with founding the frozen food industry, Clarence Birdseye, was not the first in the field, but it was he who brought a wide range of prepackaged frozen goods to the domestic ice box and created a culinary revolution. Birdseye had become interested in the possibility of preserving perishable foods by deep freezing while engaged in a US Government survey of fish and wildlife in Labrador between 1912 and 1915. ‘The first winter’, he wrote, ‘I saw natives catching fish in fifty below zero weather, which froze stiff as soon as they were taken out of the water. Months later, when they were thawed out, some of these fish were still alive’. Birdseye learned to preserve fresh vegetables while in Labrador, by putting them in a tub of water and freezing them solid. In 1924 he established a company at Gloucester, Mass, called ‘General Seafoods Corp’, to develop the process commercially.

The first pre-cooked frozen foods were chicken fricassee and crisscross steak, introduced by Birds Eye in 1939. Other manufacturers tratrketed creamed chicken, beef stew and roast turkey with dressing the same year. The pioneer of frozen food in Britain was S.W. Swedley of Wisbech Produce Canners Ltd, Wisbech, Cambridge shire.