Robert Baker, 84, Dubbed Edison of the Poultry Industry’

Robert Baker, who died Monday at 84, was a food scientist who helped make possible a revolution in processed food, such as chicken hot dogs, chicken tenders, mechanically separated meat and fish, hard-cooked eggs for industrial kitchens, and perhaps 100 other processed victuals of the sort that make some consumers praise science and others fear for the future of food.Because he worked at the Cornell Department of Poultry Science, and acting as a kind of super-extension agent was part of his job, most of his brainstorms included a substantial portion of New York State agricultural products, including apples, chickens, and eggs.Besides chicken franks, Baker’s best-known invention may be “Cornell Chicken,” a barbecue recipe that has been republished in newspapers countless times since he introduced it in an extension pamphlet in the early 1950s, and has since become a signature dish at rural firehouse dinners all over New York State.Working with Cornell marketing professors, Baker developed and test marketed products in the Ithaca region, then shared his results freely with the public and industry. Other foods he had a hand in developing include chicken-topped pizza, frozen omelets, and instant French toast. Sometimes a simple name change could determine a product’s acceptance, for instance changing the name of a high-school cafeteria staple from “minced fish in tomato sauce” to “Sloppy Jonah.”Other times, the process could be more mysterious, as when two identical products were labeled “Chicken Franks” and “Bird Dogs.” Women vastly preferred the former, men the latter.“Once woman called me up and she said, ‘So you’re the instigator behind Bird Dogs,'” Baker told the Cornell Chronicle in 1990. The woman continued, “I want you to know that I tried them both, and your Bird Dogs are awful!”A signal success, chicken franks went on to be manufactured by approximately 100 meat packagers nationwide.Other products bombed though; it is difficult to imagine the thought processes that went into the creation of fish lasagna.Baker grew up on a fruit farm in Newark, N.Y., west of Syracuse, and majored in pomology at Cornell before receiving his masters in agriculture from Penn State. In 1949,he began working in the Cornell Department of Poultry Science. He began developing new products in 1960, after a Cornell dean asked him what he could do to help rescue New York’s flagging chicken industry.“They had lost eggs as a breakfast food when the U.S. followed Europe to ‘continental breakfasts’ of coffee, juice, and toast, and broilers were selling for 25 cents a pound, less than the cost of production,” Baker told the Cornell Chronicle. “What the industry needed was what the consumer needed,” he said. In other words, convenience food.Baker undertook basic food science, for instance developing an early version of the chicken nugget. The tough part, he recalled, was finding an effective binder. (His product was apparently not the ancestor of McDonalds’s popular offering.)He empanelled tasters. He developed new packaging, including “modified atmosphere” packs that replaced regular air with a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, thus reducing the need for ice, while extending shelf life.Ground poultry was a hit in chicken meat loafs. Chicken ham enjoyed moderate popularity, as did chicken pastrami; both were later commercialized in turkey versions available all over the country. “Chic-A-Links” (sausage) and “Chickalona” (bologna) both became successful products when renamed, incidentally showing why Baker was a professor of poultry and not a professor of advertising.Some called him the “Edison of the Poultry Industry,” the Chronicle reported.The proprietor of upstate Plainville Farms, a large-scale upstate producer of turkey, Robert Bitz, said, “Bob Baker was one of the greatest leaders in further processing poultry carcasses.” He worked on machinery for mechanically separating chicken meat from the bones, especially necks and backs.While Baker’s research found its way into hundreds of products, he made few patents and was never paid by industry, although he did do some consulting work in retirement.There is no way to assess Baker’s precise contribution to the rise in poultry consumption, but per capita consumption has risen more than five-fold since the 1950s, to more than 80 pounds, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Much of the increase is due to processed convenience foods, as well as restaurants.Baker was also an expert on food hygiene, and was often quoted around Thanksgiving time, when articles about avoiding salmonella traditionally appear. Baker once tried irradiating eggs to kill the bacteria, but found that even at low rads the eggs became discolored and unusable. He said that using lemon juice in a Caesar dressing would probably make it safe (the USDA demurred).For more than a half-century, Baker’s Chicken Coop, serving his Cornell Chicken barbecue recipe, has been an institution at the New York State Fair, held each August in Syracuse. The concession, nestled in between the horse and llama barns, was so successful that Baker sent his four children through college on the profits. President Clinton, family in tow, stopped in for a taste in 1999. But it was a take-out order (eight breasts),so Baker never learned what the legendary gourmand’s reaction was.Baker sometimes tried out new product ideas at the fair, and one year distributed free samples of “Tren,” an odd name for an even odder concoction made solely of eggs and apple juice – both, significantly, New York State products.“People loved it,” a Cornell food science professor and student of Baker’s, Robert Gravane, said.Baker retired in 1989 to Baker’s Acres 600-tree apple farm in Lansing, near Lake Cayuga, where he and his wife ran a small shop with country crafts and held occasional chicken barbecues. As recently as 2004, he was working hard but without much success on producing smaller apples for the New York State prison system, 125 per bushel.“I am doing everything I can,” he told the Ithaca Journal. “I am wondering if I can’t convince them to take bigger apples at a lower price.”Robert C. BakerBorn December 29, 1921 in Newark, N.Y.; died March 13 in Lansing; survived by his wife of 62 years, Jacoba, and six children, one of whom continues to run Baker’s Chicken Coop.

Robert Baker, 84, Dubbed Edison of the Poultry Industry’

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