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The average new supermarket now devotes 80 ft. of space to frozen foods, carries as many as 100 different cake, cookie and biscuit mixes, about 50 kinds of baby food, shelf after shelf of quick rice, instant salad dressing and other jiffy goods. The housewife can buy her frozen potatoes whipped, French fried, crinkle cut, hashed, creamed, diced, stuffed baked, escalloped, puffed, pattied, rissoléd—and home fried. She can pick up scores of different frozen complete meals, buy dozens of frozen vegetables from peas (the favorite) to chives, soups that run from tomato to wonton.
Cornish Hen Perigourdine. All this,added to the return of veterans from posts abroad and the great increase in travel, has upgraded and greatly widened U.S. food tastes, whetted appetites for exotic new dishes. Many Americans who only ten years ago thought that an artichoke was part of an automobile now serve it regularly at table; Artichoke Industries of Castroville, Calif, froze 2.9 million artichoke hearts this year. Sales of such fancy foods in the U.S. have more than doubled since 1954, last year passed the $100 million mark. Charlie Mortimer put General Foods into the field in 1957 for prestige purposes, now puts out 60 gourmet items from green turtle soup with Madeira wine to Rock Cornish game hen stuffed with wheat pilaf and roasted in savory sauce.
Many famed restaurants have joined the march to the freezer. Manhattan's gilt-edged Chambord puts out a full French line, including bouillabaisse à la Marseillaise, soufflé Grand Marnier, and Cornish Hen Perigourdine with sherry, truffles, foie gras, wild rice and brandy. Schrafft's has put on sale beef Burgundy with noodles, and chicken and mushroom pie with cheese crust. Other processors are selling kangaroo-tail soup, frozen bagels, sukiyaki, enchiladas, shish kebab and frozen chicken curry.
Cooked-ln Religion. The revolution toward convenience wins a new battle—and explodes into new products—almost every week. General Foods' Mortimer chafes at the fact that there are just so many vegetables, so he has put his company to work creating "new" vegetables. General Foods separately purees two vegetables (e.g., carrots and peas), joins them together in frozen sticks called Rolletes, which are now being test-marketed. It is working on the first frozen mixed-green salad, is test-marketing a new line of baby foods, which are partially dehydrated, then frozen; the baby foods come to the mother in flake form in envelopes, need only be stirred into hot water. Says Mortimer: "The nutrition is as perfect as can be. And the peas are so green that we have to explain to the mothers that we haven't added dye." As part of its new Horizon line, General Foods is testing a partially dehydrated spaghetti casserole that can be eaten on Friday by Catholics because its "meat" is actually made of soybeans. "It has everything," beams Mortimer, "including religion."