When was the last time you made a pitcher of orange juice from a tube of frozen mush?

If that sounds strange to you, consider this: Around the time I was born, there were generally two ways people were able to drink orange juice in the morning. 

One was to use a manual squeezer and extract the juice from an actual orange. Some people loved it, but a lot of people were turned off by the pulp that inevitably got into the juice.

The other way was to go to the freezer aisle of a store – there was only one back then – and buy a tubular can of orange juice concentrate. You would dump the frozen juice into a pitcher, fill the can with water from the sink three or four times, then stir it. You’d put the pitcher in the refrigerator and it would last as long as you needed it.

Frozen orange juice was relatively new when I was born. It came into grocery stores just after the end of World War II (which only ended nine years before I was born) and soared in popularity after Bing Crosby promoted the most prominent brand, Minute Maid, on his nationwide radio program.

So if you told my parents that their grandkids would have no idea what frozen orange juice is, they’d be surprised. I wouldn’t say shocked – again, frozen OJ wasn’t that old.

What did in the idea of frozen orange juice concentrate is, well, actual orange juice.

At about the time I was born, the idea of keeping fresh orange juice cold was just taking hold. The biggest company involved was Tropicana, which produced juice in Florida and shipped it to lucrative markets in the Northeast. 

As easy as it was to make a pitcher from frozen mush, it was a lot easier to pour something from a carton.

And Tropicana had one other advantage: No pulp. They added it relatively recently for those people (Ed: nuts) who really want it.