EntranceWho invented the modern way of freezing. The history of the creation of shock freezing
People have always been interested in ways to save food products. The first canned food appeared during the military campaigns of the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. But how to achieve long-term storage of fresh fruits, meat, fish and vegetables? Despite the fact that freezing has been actively used in cooking for more than 150 years, to avoid loss of consumer qualities when using traditional technologies impossible. Fabric structure, taste, aroma and content useful substances- all this is largely violated or lost. Deep freezing technology has revolutionized the culinary and food trade. But the process of popularizing this method lasted almost 100 years! What is the secret of blast chilling?
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Gift of the Inuit
Inuit, these natives of the northern regions of Canada, are skilled fishermen and hunters. At the beginning of the 20th century, in the eyes of a European person, they looked like savages, but involuntarily they were able to give impetus to the development modern technologies.
It's all about the method of harvesting fish, which was practiced by the Inuit. It was customary to keep the fresh catch alive in an artificial tank or cage until a strong wind began to blow. Then the fisherman laid out the fish on a hill, and it almost instantly turned to stone from the frost. Inuit-style blast chilling allows you to make blanks that are significantly different in quality from conventional freezing. Northern fishermen have empirically determined the importance of the speed of the process, which provides the wind.
In 1912, an enterprising naturalist and businessman from the United States, Clarence Birdseye, went to the Canadian province of Labrador to trade in fox furs. There he encountered local fish harvesting and was amazed that a product stored for several months, after thawing, had all the qualities of a fresh catch. Back our hero returned with the firm intention to make a revolution in technology and business.
Clarence Birdseye and Quick Freezing
The American, apparently, was the first "civilized" person who learned that not only the temperature of preservation is important, but also the dynamics of the process. After returning to the US in 1917, Birdseye experimented for several years with cooling rates and product sizes. After a series of successful developments, in 1924 he opens Birdseye Seafoods, Inc. for the wholesale trade in frozen meat, fish and vegetables. Initially, business is in Springfield, then markets in other states are being mastered.
First wave
The freezers of those times could not provide the necessary intensive cooling, so Birdseye installed powerful fans inside the units and connected the frozen ice with table salt for an endothermic reaction. Products manufactured by Birdseye Seafoods, Inc were stored in conventional freezers and delivered to retailers in refrigerated trucks.
In 1929, food giants Goldman Sachs-Trading Corporation and Postum Company became interested in quick freezing. Clarence Birdseye sold them all the patents and trademark Birdseye Seafoods, continuing to be a deep chilling consultant to these companies until 1938.
The most amazing thing happened after World War II. The frozen food trade exploded, but the principles of blast freezing were used only by the Birds Eye and General Foods brands. It was only at the end of the 20th century that accelerated deep cooling gained worldwide recognition and became a key technology for increasing the competitiveness of the logistics business. quality products and ready meals.
Confession
Why did Clarence Birdseye's revolution not become a conquest of the world market already in the 30s and 40s? The reasons lie in the backlog of fundamental science from the introduction of the invention into practice. For a long time it was believed that only the extremely low temperature generated by Birdseye's machine - a deep freezer - mattered.
Nobody studied the processes taking place at the subcellular and molecular levels, so the introduction of shock freezing turned into a profanation that lasted several decades. The capacities and volumes of intensive cooling grew, but the quality of products remained the same as at the end of the 19th century, when the first compressor-freezing units began to be massively used.
Only in the 80s - 90s of the XX century, doctors and technologists Food Industry, who studied the low-temperature destruction of biological tissues, dotted the "i". It turns out that the key to success lies in stopping the formation of ice crystals. The faster the phase change of the substance occurs, the more ice fractals (crystallization centers) are formed, but the smaller their size.
With traditional freezing, which lasts 3 - 5 hours, the density of fractals is less, but their size is orders of magnitude larger. Mechanical damage by ice microstructures leads to rupture of tissue membranes and destruction of cellular structures. As a result, muscle fibers are stratified, torn, crushed. Nutrient juices enter the interstitial space. Such meat after defrosting is very different in its properties from fresh meat: it is more rigid after cooking, its microtexture becomes unnatural, taste and aroma properties are largely lost. The qualitative composition of vitamins and enzyme groups deteriorates significantly.
In addition to the loss of consumer properties, low-temperature degradation affects the loss of the product with the so-called freezing, which directly depends on the ingress of juices into the interstitial zones.
There is another bonus that a deep freezer gives to the manufacturer and the end user - this is a reduction in the time of the first stage of the process (reducing the temperature from positive to zero). The high speed of passage through this zone protects against the development of colonies of microorganisms that originally exist in fresh meat products, vegetables, fruits and berries.
Shock freeze today
To a large extent, modern shock freezers are versatile devices that can cook for long-term storage both protein products and plant-growing nomenclature. However, there are no universal solutions for all occasions. Like the medical profession, modern designers of blast chillers rely on “loyalty” ranges that depend on tissue types and fragment sizes. Therefore, the best and most productive deep freezers are adapted to a rather narrow production segment.
Clarence Birdsay
The English philosopher and politician Francis Bacon could have been a pioneer in the matter of freezing food: in 1626, he caught a cold while stuffing a chicken with snow in an attempt to determine whether the meat is better stored in the cold, and ... died. Clarence Birdseye is considered to be the father of the frozen food industry, although he was far from the first to think of freezing food. However, he was the first to exploit the commercial potential of the idea. The first frozen Bird's Eye products hit the shelves on March 6, 1930.
“In the first winter, I watched the locals fish at 50 degrees below zero: the fish froze as soon as they were pulled out of the water. And when they thawed it a few months later, it turned out that some of the fish were still alive. Clarence Birdseye's innovative ideas about freezing food came from observing the Inuit. Studying the fish stocks and wildlife of Newfoundland in 1912-1915 on the instructions of the government, Birdseye looked at how the locals stored food. From them he learned to store vegetables by freezing them in water.
Freezing meat
But Birdseye was not the first, in the strict sense of the word, freezing was not only used by the Inuit: meat for transportation began to be frozen from the middle of the 19th century, frozen fruit was sold along with ice cream as early as 1905, and in 1929 the Canadian government facilitated the entry into the market frozen fish as the first individually packaged frozen food product. However, Birdseye managed to put forward two new, revolutionary ideas.
He found that when frozen slowly, large ice crystals form, and if such a product is subsequently thawed, it will turn out to be watery. So Birdseye developed a quick freezing process that didn't spoil the food. In addition, he came up with the idea of freezing already cooked fruits, vegetables and servings of fish - this idea was later presented to customers as “ modern way shopping and cooking.
Tiresome chores in the kitchen come to an end
The advertisement said that the products are “frozen in an accelerated way, so they do not lose their freshness, taste and useful properties. All products are ready for further processing. They don't need to be cleaned. The tiring chores in the kitchen are over. Everything you need has already been done for you.”
In 1924, Birdseye founded a frozen food company to put his ideas into practice, and in 1929 sold it to Postum (later General Foods Corporation). In 1930, the company launched the first range of quick freezing products under the Birds Eye brand. Frozen food sold slowly at first: customers didn't think to look for it in the same refrigerators where ice cream was stored, the food itself was relatively expensive, and in the UK only a few households had freezers.
Frozen fish sticks
However, frozen fish fingers have been hailed as a revolution in food production ever since man learned to cook food over fire. Freezing food, proven for centuries by the Inuit, is an invaluable aid to modern life.
Dmitry Demyanov, Samogo.Net (
Who is who in the world of discoveries and inventions Sitnikov Vitaly Pavlovich
When was the first time food was frozen?
We consider freezing food a modern invention, but in fact it is one of the oldest ways to preserve food. Since the time when man settled in cold regions, he has been freezing fish, game and other meat products for future consumption.
The first known patent for freezing food was issued in 1852 in England. According to this method, the products were immersed in an ice-salt solution. And all other patents issued at that time for freezing food were based on the use of ice-salt solution.
But freezing food didn't see much use until the advent of the mechanical refrigerator. It allowed meat products to be frozen and transported over long distances.
At the beginning of the 20th century, attempts were made to freeze not only meat and fish, but also other products. G. S. Baker began freezing fruit in Colorado in 1908. The main goal was to freeze part of the fruit crop in order to sell it later.
At first, only certain types of fruit were frozen, mainly strawberries and cherries. They were frozen by the cold-packing method. This means that containers or containers with fruit were placed in large pantries where the temperature was around -25 °C.
In 1916, experiments in Germany showed that food can be frozen. fast way- in a few hours. In 1917, Clarence Birdsay began developing a method for freezing food in small containers (bags) for sale in stores. But only in 1919 such packages of frozen foods appeared on the market.
The results of his experiments and the work of others showed that many vegetables could be frozen in this way, and the industry of frozen foods began to expand.
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In the store you can buy any semi-finished products, from frozen dough to vegetable mix. But it was not always so. Who Invented Frozen Foods and When Did It Happen?
An unexpected source of inspiration
Frozen food originated with Clarence Birdseye, who invented the quick freezing process in 1920. It became the basis for the modern frozen food industry. Between 1912 and 1917 Birdseye, a native of Brooklyn, lived in Labrador, where he worked at a hospital. 
After that, he began to breed foxes. It was at this time that he became acquainted with the traditions of the local inhabitants of the Inuit tribe. They went fishing and then froze their prey immediately after being caught. When this fish, left in the frosty air after being caught, was cooked, it tasted just like fresh. 
The Path to Patented Technology
Subsequently, Birdseye returned to America and began working in industrial fisheries. He found that freshly caught fish often spoiled before it was delivered to the store. He remembered the storage method he'd seen on Labrador. Birdseye believed he could replicate this approach and created the concept of frozen foods. 
In 1923, he already became the founder of a frozen fish company in New York. Frozen foods were on sale before that, they had existed for half a century, but few people bought them - the food lost all its freshness and all the flavor when it melted. The thing was that they froze it too slowly, which caused large ice crystals to form, destroying the cellular structure of the products. 
Birdseye's company did not become successful until he moved to Massachusetts, the former center of the fishing industry. There he finalized and patented his technology. The only problem on his way was that in many stores there were no suitable showcases-refrigerators. 
Increasing popularity
In 1929, Birdseye's business was bought out by a cereal and other food company. The popularity of frozen meals began to slowly grow. 
They were widely used after the Second World War, when food was scarce, canned food was expensive, and women were forced to work harder and did not have time for long cooking. People increasingly began to try frozen meals, and over time they have become a permanent basis for everyday cuisine in many homes around the world.
Recently, the market for frozen convenience foods has shown steady growth. This is facilitated by the increase in the welfare of the population, the acceleration of the pace of life in large cities, the growing desire of consumers to save time on cooking.
The volume of the frozen food market in 2011, according to AMI "VETRA-marketing", amounted to about 1875 thousand tons in kind and $4 billion in money terms. By the end of this year, the category is expected to grow by 3-4% in physical terms.
Frozen food concept.
The history of the development of ready meals is rooted in the technology of freezing food for later use. Mankind has been familiar with the practice of freezing food for several centuries. According to scientists, this technology was invented by accident by peoples who lived in cold climates such as the Arctic. However, until the 19th century, the technology of freezing food was not used for commercial purposes.
One of the first patents for freezing food was issued in 1842. In 1861, a patent was issued in America for a method of freezing fish. The scope of frozen food distribution became wider much later, 100 years later, when the first refrigerator appeared. In 1861, the first meat freezing factory was established in Sydney, Australia. One of the first successful transportations of frozen meat was recorded in 1869.
The success of frozen meat in the market has pushed manufacturers to develop methods for freezing other foods. One of the methods - "cold packing" - began to be used in 1905. This first technology is based on the process of so-called slow freezing: the products are processed, then laid out in large containers. The containers, in turn, were transferred to low-temperature warehouses and remained there until the products turned into solid briquettes. Freezing lasted from one to three days.
The emergence of modern freezing technologies was facilitated by the activities of the American naturalist of the early 20th century, Clarence Birdsey. During a trip to the Labrador Peninsula, he drew attention to this way storage - it was used by Canadian aborigines. Most of all, the scientist was struck by the fact that after cooking, frozen fish, which was one of the staple foods on the coast, practically did not differ from fresh. Returning to New York, Birdsey began research on food freezing, as a result of which he came to the conclusion that slow freezing leads to the formation of large ice crystals that destroy cell membranes, while fast freezing preserves the cellular structure and taste of food. This discovery was the starting point for the development of "shock" (quick) freezing technology. With her help, Birdsey was able to reduce the time of freezing food from three days to several minutes.
Industrial production "on a grand scale" In 1922, he opened the company Birds Eye Seafoods, which tried to sell fresh-frozen seafood. However, buyers did not appreciate the innovations. The company was ahead of its time - because then there were no home refrigerators, no refrigerated display cases, no refrigerated cars - which led it to bankruptcy. But Birdsey did not give up and the following year founded another company in coastal Gloucester, Massachusetts, General Seafoods, which, using Clarence's latest invention - a double refrigerated conveyor, took up the freezing of meat, vegetables and fruits (and changed its name to General Foods). In 1929 Birdsey sold the company for a large profit, remaining head of the research department. In 1930, after many years of development, he patented a blast freezing system that packaged meat, fish or vegetables in waterproof cardboard containers. Immediately thereafter, in 18 stores in Springfield, Massachusetts, General Foods launched 26 Birds Eye Frosted Foods branded items - frozen meat, fish, vegetables (mainly spinach and peas) and fruits. He helped promote these products to grocers and was also involved in promoting refrigerated display cases to stores in 1934. At first, buyers were cautious, but by the summer the trade went quite successfully. In 1934, the company took an active part in the expansion of retail trade, offering inexpensive refrigerated display cases to stores, and in 1944, the first use of refrigerated cars for transportation over long distances. Until freezers were widely available to consumers, his products were not successful.
However, in 1945, airlines began using frozen meals. And in the 1950s, when household refrigerators appeared in homes, fresh-frozen foods finally became everyday food. This led to the introduction of ready-to-eat meals in 1954 as a convenient alternative to home-cooked meals.
Technology shock.
The introduction of quick freezing technology has revolutionized the food industry and trade. Today, shock freezing, which allows you to quickly freeze products without losing them. nutritional qualities successfully used in the food industry. Shock freezing is based on the method of removing heat from the product by lowering the temperature. environment up to −30−35 °С. Air acts as a coolant in the chamber, which intensively blows the product. It should be noted that a further decrease in temperature does not make sense, since this leads to increased deformations of the product and unjustified power consumption. In this case, the product goes through three stages of processing. At the first stage, it is cooled down to 0 °С by exposing it to an air flow having a temperature of -35-37 °С. On the second stage, the product passes from a liquid to a solid state by overcoming the creoscopic point from 0 to -5 °C. In this case, the formation of its dimensions occurs. And at the last stage, the product is frozen, that is, its final transition to the solid phase, which is accompanied by a decrease in temperature from -5 to -18 °C.
Unlike conventional freezing, shock freezing has the following advantages: reduction of the freezing period by 3-10 times;
reduction of product losses by 2-3 times;
reduction of production area by 1.5-2 times;
reduction of production personnel by 25-30%;
reduction of the payback period by 15-20%.
Another reason for using the technology is the total freezing time. For example, with the usual method, the freezing period for cutlets and dumplings is 2.5 hours, while with quick freezing, 20-35 minutes is enough. Without unnecessary mathematical calculations, a clear economic advantage is visible.
In order to manufacture different kinds semi-finished products, ready meals and other frozen products, the following types of equipment are used: - fluidized quick freezers.
They are used for freezing small or chopped raw materials: fruits, berries, soup mixtures, stews, french fries. They also freeze mushrooms, shrimp, small fish and other seafood. These devices have the most minimal shrinkage, maintain the high quality of products and have a high freezing rate.
The product frozen in this way is well packaged and has a crumbly structure;
Cradle quick freezers are used for freezing semi-finished products from fish, poultry, meat - cutlets, meatballs, hamburgers, steaks, sausages and confectionery.
In thickness, products in such devices are frozen up to 80 mm in length and in width - up to 200 × 150 mm.Conveyor quick freezers are used for fish, meat, dairy, flour semi-finished products and ready meals, including pastries, puff pastry, pancakes, meatballs, hamburgers, sausages, steaks, dumplings, dumplings. Here the thickness of the frozen products reaches 25 mm.
These devices are used to freeze 80% of known products. Also, with their help, freezing of products of the plant group - strawberries, peaches, mushrooms, apricots;
Spiral quick freezers are used for freezing fish, meat, portioned dishes, vegetables, fruits and breaded semi-finished products.
We emphasize that the technology of shock freezing has significant advantages, allowing you to recoup the cost of equipment in the shortest possible time. Today, it is becoming a standard for most meat processors who would not be able to increase production volumes and expand their geography by transporting products to distant regions.