Module 5 - Section 2 句子填空 - Exercise 10

Born in 1886 in New York, the American naturalist Clarence Birdseye had an instinctive curiosity, a love of food, and a strong entrepreneurial streak. At the age of ten, he was hunting, selling live animals and teaching himself taxidermy, the art of preserving and mounting the skins of animals.He studied science in college, but had to drop out because tuition was too expensive. Forced to support himself, he moved west, where he worked in Montana as an assistant naturalist, capturing small mammals to study the parasites that they often carried in their fur. Eventually, partly as a result of this research, the source of a prevalent disease was isolated.

By the late 1950s, there were Krispy Kreme doughnut outlets in 12 states, and a new Massachusetts company called Dunkin' Donuts had been going strong since it was founded in 1950. Smaller companies like one called Ring King Jr were driven out of business because they couldn't compete with the efficiency of the large chains. For a while in New York City, the popularity of the doughnut seemed to be going into decline. This was mostly due to being challenged by the bagel, a boiled bread of similar shape and size to a doughnut, which some thought of as a more sophisticated treat. But college students and others throughout the country never lost enthusiasm for the doughnut.

Today, the doughnut is thriving. In the US alone, about 10 billion doughnuts are made every year, and American doughnut chains do well in at least 37 countries outside the US. It's not surprising, then, that one continues to hear pop songs about doughnuts, or see reprints of the famous children's book Homer Price which features a doughnut-making machine which has gone crazy.

Within a few years, Birdseye moved to the arctic tundra of Labrador, in what is now northern Canada, where he worked for several years as a fur trader. He spent much of his time among the local trappers who worked year-round in the icy wilderness, and he rode long journeys with a nine dog sled to purchase goods that were exported to a company in New York. It appeared that Birdseye relished the challenge that came with the cold climate and rugged landscape of Labrador.

In the first decades of the 20th century, the frozen-food business was considered to be the very bottom of the barrel. Frozen food was terrible. In fact, it was even banned in New York State prisons for being beneath the culinary standard of convicts. A key problem was that the food was being frozen at relatively high temperatures. often just a few degrees below freezing. A slow freeze allowed ice to form larger crystals that broke the membranes surrounding and protecting each of the cells within the food. When the food was defrosted, the ice crystals melted and the juice would leak out. But flash freezing avoided this problem, plus scientific advances had made it possible to artificially produce temperatures that were much like Birdseye had experienced in Labrador. By the early 1920s, Birdseye had created a flash-freezing process using cartons of fish, stacked and frozen at minus 40 degrees Celsius.