Episode Details

In the 1920s frozen food meant mushy, tasteless leftovers, yet a frozen turkey served on Marjorie Merriweather Post's yacht helped spark a $22 million deal. This episode tells the story of Clarence Birdseye, a Brooklyn kid who sold taxidermy lessons at age 11, dropped out of Amherst and worked for the USDA helping show that ticks carried Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

In Labrador, ice fishing with the Inuit at minus 40 degrees, Birdseye noticed that flash-frozen fish tasted fresh when thawed. We explain the ice crystal science behind that insight, his first company's bankruptcy, the brine-chilled double belt freezer that made quick freezing commercial, and the Springfield, Massachusetts test that launched retail frozen foods.

• How Birdseye's taxidermy and field biology prepared him to study food preservation
• Why fast freezing makes tiny ice crystals that leave cell walls intact
• Why Birdseye Seafoods went bankrupt in 1924 and how he re-engineered the process
• The double belt freezer, packing food in cartons before freezing, and the $22 million sale
• Why General Foods had to supply grocers with freezer cases to launch frozen food