A poultry era in American history

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 12, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

Want to read a sketch on the origins of that very American invention, the frozen TV dinner? You'll find it in The Old Farmer's 2003 Almanac by Robert B. Thomas to which for the people first introduced its readers in the last issue but through which it continues to skim with great interest.

The turkey TV dinner, the first in a long line of such cuisine, made its debut in 1952 "in grocery stores in six cities between Omaha and Chicago" largely because Swanson, the "largest turkey grower in the world," found that it had a lot of unsold turkeys on hand and needed something to do with them. The frozen dinner was one solution.

The new product sold "for 98 cents to $1.29--a whopping amount, considering that a McDonald's hamburger was only 15 cents" at the time--so folks perhaps regarded these instant banquets as something of a luxury. The dinner included cornbread stuffing (soon changed to the white-bread variety) and a sweet potato (later changed to white mashed potatoes).

The frozen turkey dinners didn't sell well at first, in part because Americans had become accustomed to eating turkey at Thanksgiving and were not at ease with it on other occasions. There was another problem: Most grocers didn't have frozen-food cabinets.

But Swanson decided that all that had to be done was to familiarize American consumers with the quality and convenience of their TV dinners--and that proved right. By the end of their first year on the market, 10 million had been sold. The rest, as they say, is history.

In October 1953 Swanson introduced a fried-chicken dinner. That was followed in March 1954 by a sliced pot roast of beef and in January 1955 by frozen fillet of haddock.

Cranberry sauce, and a fourth tray compartment to hold it, was added to the turkey dinner in 1960.