Clarence Birdseye Quotes
100 Clarence Birdseye Quotes
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[On his belief that after the war American women would start buying furs in large quantities] I communicated this belief to a fur house in New York, and the concern agreed to gamble $8,000 cash on my hunch if I would gamble my time. Consequently, I traveled more thousands of miles over Labrador by dogsled buying up furs with the cash. At the end of a year my share of the profit was some $6,000. That was a tidy sum in those days…
Clarence Birdseye
It was shortly after my bride and I had settled down in the wilds that my inquisitive nature led me to make certain observations which were later to play an important part in the development of my quick-freezing process.
Clarence Birdseye
I observed that caribou, wild geese, partridges, fish, and other flesh foods frozen almost instantly in the sub-zero blasts of midwinter were juicier and more flavorful than similar foods frozen in relatively mild spring and fall weather. ‘Why?’ I wondered.
Clarence Birdseye
My curiosity was aroused to such an extent that I made experiments with vegetables, too.
Clarence Birdseye
When cooked, the quick-frozen stuff was as delicious as fresh cabbage.
Clarence Birdseye
[On learning about quick freezing meat and vegetables] I tucked this knowledge away in my subconscious mind, but its commercial possibilities did not dawn on me at that time. My occupation was fur trading, and I concentrated on it until America’s entrance into the war in 1917 brought me back to the States for good.
Clarence Birdseye
Americans would eat more fish, I felt, if it could be kept fresh during shipment. How could it be kept really fresh?
Clarence Birdseye
[On keeping fish really fresh] I invented an inexpensive container for shipping chilled fish, but it didn’t solve the problem. What was the answer?
Clarence Birdseye
I was stumped by what to do about keeping fish fresh during shipment. Then my subconscious suddenly told me that perishable foods could be kept perfectly preserved in the same way I had kept them in Labrador – by quick freezing!
Clarence Birdseye
I borrowed a corner of an ice-cream plant in New Jersey and started experiments in mechanical freezing.
Clarence Birdseye
In 1923 I organized a company and the next year put quick-frozen fish on the market. But many difficulties confronted me…
Clarence Birdseye
Many difficulties confronted me. American housewives had deep-seated prejudices against ‘cold storage’ foods of all kinds. Money was needed, a lot of money, to set up a large organization for producing, distributing, promoting and advertising the new product.
Clarence Birdseye
I soon exhausted my savings and went broke. My wife and I did not let that keep us from taking another chance…
Clarence Birdseye
We hocked our insurance and used the money to design an automatic freezer and form a new company. Eventually, I got the backing of several wealthy men who saw my vision and were not afraid to gamble on something new. In 1929 we sold out for $22,000,000.
Clarence Birdseye
[On selling out his company for $22,000,000.00 in 1929] That was the about the largest sum, I believe, ever paid for a patent in this country…
Clarence Birdseye
[On selling his company for $22 million in 1929] I was in my forties when this transaction made me financially independent for the first time in my life.
Clarence Birdseye
[After he had sold his company in 1929] A good many of my friends advised me to retire and take it easy. I had no more intention of doing so than I have today. Following one’s curiosity is much more fun than taking things easy and I continued to ask questions and take chances…
Clarence Birdseye
[In 1951] This country holds far greater opportunities for youth today than it did when the first settlers trekked over the mountains and took up land in the West.
Clarence Birdseye
[In 1943 on the frozen food industry] Tomorrow the industry will become truly international.
Clarence Birdseye
If I see a man skinning a fish… a host of questions pop into my mind. Why is he skinning the fish? Why is he doing it by hand? Is the skin good for anything? If I am in a restaurant and get biscuits, which I like, I ask the chef how he made them: What did he put in the dough? How did he mix it? How long did the biscuits bake? At what temperature? When I visit a strange city, I go through the local industrial plants to see how they make things. I don’t care what the product is. I am just as much interested in the manufacture of chewing gum as of steel.
Clarence Birdseye
[On people saying what an improbable adventure his life was.] I was just very curious.
Clarence Birdseye
The public customarily thinks of me as an inventor… but inventing is only one of my lines.
Clarence Birdseye
I liked nothing better, than to tramp alone through fields or along the seashore studying the birds and other wildlife which I encountered.
Clarence Birdseye
Suddenly I came upon an open spring-hole…
Clarence Birdseye
[On him making unleavened pork loaf] Bread with pork in it is common here – Rube forgot to take any baking powder with the barrels this trip so that the pork loaf was simply an unleavened mixture of flour, water, pieces of salt pork, and a few raisins fried brown on both sides. This bread is very soggy but each hunk is a square meal and it certainly sticks to the ribs for a long while.
Clarence Birdseye
The people were so hard up they had to sell their fur…
Clarence Birdseye
[On hearing in 1915 a rumor that] Belgium had wiped out a detachment of German soldiers. I certainly hope that is the case!
Clarence Birdseye
[On his wife Eleanor being six months pregnant] Shortly after breakfast E and I went to Dr Stern’s office and made arrangements. I gave him carte blanche in making hospital and all other necessary arrangements.
Clarence Birdseye
[On an early business partnership of ‘Hammond and Birdseye’] Mr Hammond is no longer interested in Hammond and Birdseye.
Clarence Birdseye
Good lord, how find gull gravy tastes when one hadn’t had anything fresh for a long time.
Clarence Birdseye
[On having to leave his wife and young son for a business trip] Pulling teeth would have been a mild process compared to running off and leaving E. [Eleanor] and Sonny.
Clarence Birdseye
Our larder is going to be well-stocked, and we needn’t fear scurvy or rickets, or pip, or beriberi or any of those little ailments which come of a too salt diet!
Clarence Birdseye
Practically every morning throughout the winter the water in my pitcher is frozen – often so hard that it has to be thawed out with hot water. So a few mornings ago, after a cold night, I was much surprised to find, upon thrusting a hand into the pitcher to find it filled with water instead of ice. When, however I poured some of the water into my bowl and some more into a glass, and then scooped up a handful I found that the bowl was full of a spongy mass of ice crystals; and the same formation had taken place in the glass and the water pitcher – yet a few seconds before there had been no sign of ice in the water. Evidently the water had been in a state of equilibrium – at the freezing point, and all ready to congeal, but needing some little stirring up to start the crystallization. I seem to remember seeing the same thing done in a physics lab experiment, but certainly never ran across it before ‘in nature.’ Did you?
Clarence Birdseye
[On the science of freezing and the laws of crystallization] Some of you physics-sharks please give me an explanation of this happening.
Clarence Birdseye
[On his subconscious resembling an electronic calculating machine] If you feed the right information into it, it will quietly go to work in mysterious ways of its own and, by-and-by, produce the answer to your problem.
Clarence Birdseye
My subconscious suddenly told me that perishable foods could be kept perfectly preserved in the same way I had kept them in Labrador – by quick freezing!
Clarence Birdseye
My invention relates to methods of treating food products by refrigerating the same, preferably by ‘quick’ freezing the product into a frozen block, in which the pristine qualities and flavors of the product are retained for a substantial period after the block has been thawed.
Clarence Birdseye
[On inventing frozen food] As a practical, commercial article of commerce.
Clarence Birdseye
[In 1954 on a about a trip to the coast] I charcoal-broiled and we four adults consumed two chickens, and in addition sundry stuffed eggs, grilled toast, potato salad, bananas, beer, coke, lemonade and for roughage, large quantities of ever drifting sand. But today we varied our picnic routine by adding surf fishing for pejerreyes – large yellow-tailed scrumptiously edible smelt-like fish.
Clarence Birdseye
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