As the first in an ongoing series on innovators and inventors from Cornell and Ithaca who influence our everyday lives, this afternoon we profile a late Cornell professor responsible for a now ubiquitous staple of fast food cuisine.
Professor Robert C. Baker, inventor of the chicken nugget and myriad other consumer food products, graduated from Cornell's agriculture school in 1943 with a degree in pomology, the study of the cultivation of fruit, a far cry from the convenience food for which he is famed.

Baker who was born in Newark, N.Y. and lived most of his life in Lansing. He started teaching at Cornell in 1957, serving as a food science professor for 32 years. In 1970, he founded the Cornell Institute for Food Science and Marketing and was its first director until his retirement in 1989, this according to an obituary published in the Cornell Chronicle after Baker's death in 2004 at the age of 84.

Baker's key innovation was a new technique for applying a breading to the chicken piece in such a way that the breading would stay on during the frying process and then as the consumer actually ate the product. While we may not think twice about the science behind this seemingly mundane foodstuff, Baker's breakthrough in the 1950s led to the eventual introduction of one of McDonalds' most successful products, the Chicken McNugget, in 1980 and the eventual ubiquity of the chicken nugget throughout the fast food industry.

Baker was famous for more than just the Chicken nugget, though. He also created multiple meat products, including turkey ham and ground poultry, as well as his famous Cornell chicken barbeque sauce. You can get the recipe for the sauce here.

Besides Baker, Cornell also produced other innovators in the fast food industry. The creator of the McDonald's Quarter Pounder, Al Bernardin earned his bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1952. James MacLemore, one of the founders of Burger King graduated from the Hotel School in 1947. Today, Mac's Cafe at the Statler Hotel is named after MacLemore.

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