Before McDonald's pioneered McNuggets for fast food consumption, a Cornell University researcher developed bite-size breaded chicken sticks that could be easily fried and frozen.
Chicken nuggets are a quintessentially American food: easily mass produced and a quick, convenient protein source that can be eaten on the go. A staple of fast food restaurants and grocery freezer aisles for decades, they weren’t always on America’s dinner plates and children’s menus. It would take war, laboratory experiments and changing U.S. dietary guidelines before chains like McDonald’s catapulted chicken nuggets to a household name.
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World War II’s Chicken Problem
During World War II, chicken became many Americans’ primary source of protein after the U.S. military commandeered red meat for soldiers, creating a beef shortage at home. The massive chicken demand incentivized businesses to produce the birds more cheaply, says anthropologist Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food: “World War II encouraged the spread, modernization and industrialization of chicken on a much larger scale.”
Late in the war, the military came for chicken, too: “In the spring of 1945, the War Food Administration requisitioned almost 100 percent of the production in the Delmarva peninsula (spanning Delaware, Maryland and Virginia), a major poultry-producing area,” says Dr. Ashton Merck, history instructor at Duke University. “The army’s requisitions provided a crucial opening for southern and midwestern producers to gain inroads in lucrative Eastern markets.”
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When the war ended, poultry demand dropped. Red meat was no longer scarce, and chicken had a portion problem: At the time, most were sold whole. The birds were too small to feed all those postwar growing families, but too large for one person. Preparing whole roasts was a time-consuming task for women increasingly entering the workforce. It would take a new invention to reinvigorate the American appetite for chicken.
MAR 26, 2021
Who Invented Chicken Nuggets?
Gerald Matzka/picture alliance/Getty Images
Before McDonald's pioneered McNuggets for fast food consumption, a Cornell University researcher developed bite-size breaded chicken sticks that could be easily fried and frozen.
Chicken nuggets are a quintessentially American food: easily mass produced and a quick, convenient protein source that can be eaten on the go. A staple of fast food restaurants and grocery freezer aisles for decades, they weren’t always on America’s dinner plates and children’s menus. It would take war, laboratory experiments and changing U.S. dietary guidelines before chains like McDonald’s catapulted chicken nuggets to a household name.
[bad iframe src]
World War II’s Chicken Problem
During World War II, chicken became many Americans’ primary source of protein after the U.S. military commandeered red meat for soldiers, creating a beef shortage at home. The massive chicken demand incentivized businesses to produce the birds more cheaply, says anthropologist Steve Striffler, author of Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food: “World War II encouraged the spread, modernization and industrialization of chicken on a much larger scale.”
Late in the war, the military came for chicken, too: “In the spring of 1945, the War Food Administration requisitioned almost 100 percent of the production in the Delmarva peninsula (spanning Delaware, Maryland and Virginia), a major poultry-producing area,” says Dr. Ashton Merck, history instructor at Duke University. “The army’s requisitions provided a crucial opening for southern and midwestern producers to gain inroads in lucrative Eastern markets.”
[bad iframe src]
When the war ended, poultry demand dropped. Red meat was no longer scarce, and chicken had a portion problem: At the time, most were sold whole. The birds were too small to feed all those postwar growing families, but too large for one person. Preparing whole roasts was a time-consuming task for women increasingly entering the workforce. It would take a new invention to reinvigorate the American appetite for chicken.
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Robert C. Baker Invents Chicken Nuggets
Nuggets manufacturing
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Though the origin of chicken nuggets, like so many food items, remains disputed, it’s commonly accepted that agricultural scientist Robert C. Baker invented chicken nuggets in a laboratory at Cornell University in 1963. They were among dozens of poultry products he developed during his career, including turkey ham and chicken hot dogs, helping to greatly expand the U.S. poultry industry.
“Robert C. Baker was both a product of changes going on in the poultry world and a driver of those changes,” says Striffler. “Industry leaders quickly realized that real profit would not so much come from producing more chicken, but by doing more to chicken. Hence, further processing.”
Baker’s innovation was to mold boneless bite-size morsels from ground, skinless chicken (often from the little-used parts of the bird), and encase them in a breading perfectly engineered to solve two key problems: It stayed put through both frying and freezing, critical for mass production and transportation. His “chicken sticks” earned him the nickname the “George Washington Carver of chicken.”
Baker did not patent chicken nuggets. Instead, he mailed the recipe to hundreds of American companies who would later profit from his invention. But it would take a new health trend for Americans to truly embrace the chicken nugget.