Frozen Future

FORTUNE in its December issue, pictures an almost fabulously frozen postwar future for the average citizen. Some of the possibilities: Manufacturers expect to put electric refrigeration into practically every one of the nation's 40,000,000 housing units (v.

19,400,000 installed by 1942).

They also dream about putting two refrigerating units in a lot of homes--the second one a "home freezer." Food can now be cooked, frozen and reheated with no effect on taste.

This fact has caused some restaurateurs to make startling plans for national house-to-house distribution of centrally cooked foods after the war. A Chicago freezer manufacturer talks glibly of delivering frozen delicacies from New Orleans' famed Antoine's, is "sure the day will come when housewives can carry on for weeks without really cooking anything." Concludes FORTUNE calmly "Eight hundred million beefsteaks a year might be broiled in or near Chicago, quick frozen, and eaten any time from a day to six months later, anywhere from Maine to Mexico."

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