Free Bird | REMEMBERING ROBERT BAKER '43

tHE COMING OF SPRING IN central New York is a time of receding snowbanks and chicken barbecues. The first whiffs of smoke begin to float over church parking lots in April, and by June volunteer fire companies and Lion's Clubs from Sempronius to Penn Yan are hard at work swabbing smoldering racks of split broilers at weekend fundraisers. To natives, this seasonal ritual feels like an Upstate eternal, but it is in fact a relatively recent development that can be traced to the efforts of one man: food science professor Robert Baker '43, who came up with the sauce recipe for what is popularly called "Cornell Chicken."He died in March at the age of eighty-four.

Baker actually devised the stuff in State College, Pennsylvania, where he was working as an extension agent while pursuing a master's degree at Penn State in the late 1940s. A visit from the governor prompted a call for a big outdoor feed, and Baker suggested a chicken barbecue, whipping up a simple vinegar-based basting sauce for the occasion. At the time, the notion of cooking birds out in the open air was something of a novelty in the Northeast-- the Weber kettle grill wasn't invented until 1952, and chickens were generally saved for the occasional Sunday dinner. Baker changed all that.He was hired by Cornell's poultry science department in 1949 and charged with a specific duty: get people to eat more chicken and eggs. "Bob took that seriously," says Joseph Hotchkiss, the director of the Institute of Food Science and Marketing, which Baker founded in 1970. "It was his mission in life."

He did the job well. Baker and his Cornell team transformed the poultry industry and helped turn packaged chicken parts into a supermarket staple. In 1963 he pioneered the development of mechanically deboned chicken meat, eventually conjuring up more than fifty processed chicken products, from nuggets and patties to chicken hot dogs and baloney. The poultry business is now a $29 billion industry, with 40 percent of sales involving processed meat. The New York Times dubbed Baker the "chicken Edison" in 1984 for the innovations he handed off to producers such as Frank Perdue, who would fly into Ithaca on his corporate jet to inspect Baker's latest creations. "He did everything,"Hotchkiss says, "but make money off them."

It was that sauce from State College, however, that made Baker a Cornell icon. The concoction is both dead-simple-- salt, pepper, oil, and apple cider vinegar mixed up with poultry seasoning and an egg--and a resourceful combination of key New York State agricultural products. The science behind it was equally ingenious: the egg helps the oil emulsify and binds the sauce to the meat, and since there was no added sugar, even the most inattentive Rotarian wouldn't scorch it. To popularize his foolproof grilling technique--and build a market for smaller-grade birds--in 1950 Baker produced a pamphlet called "Barbecued Chicken" that included detailed instructions on everything from building a backyard fire pit out of cinderblocks to making enough sauce and sides for a 300-person event. Distributed by Cornell Cooperative Extension and reprinted several times over the ensuing decades, it was the booklet that launched a thousand chicken barbecue fundraisers. Baker was a one-man movement, cooking chickens county-to-county across the state as well as selling them at Baker's Acres, the fruit farm and market he owned in North Lansing, and at his concession stand at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, a fair fixture since 1949. To many an Upstater, alum and otherwise, the taste of a Cornell chicken drumstick--mildly tangy, crispskinned, tinged with smoke--is the essence of summer.

Baker passed away from a heart attack on Monday, March 13; on the following Saturday afternoon his large extended family gathered in the parking lot of the Lansing United Methodist Church, fired up the grill, and barbecued 425 chickens.

Memorial donations for a graduate student fund at the Department of Food Science can be sent to the attention of Joseph Hotchkiss, Department of Food Science, 116 Stocking Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853.