Frozen Food: reading answers and analysis
A history of keeping food cold: freeze-dried Andean potatoes, Arctic ice towed across the Atlantic, Australian 'mechanical ice' for beer and then meat exports, and Clarence Birdseye's quick-freezing, learned from Inuit fishermen. Wartime tin rationing, affordable fridges and Swanson's TV Dinner turned frozen food into a huge industry.
Questions 1-13 · 13 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The notes (1-7) are organised by date and follow the passage from A to I, so the dates are your signposts. The TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN statements (8-13) go back through B, D, E and J, then finish with today's figures in K.
Questions 1-7
Scan for each date, then read the sentence around it. Question 3 asks what two kinds of food were shipped, so the answer is the general word covering beef and mutton. Question 5 is the packaging material that let shoppers see the food. Question 6 is the metal that was rationed for the war.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | potatoes | — |
| 2 | butter | — |
| 3 | meat | — |
| 4 | crystals | — |
| 5 | cellophane | — |
| 6 | tin | — |
| 7 | refrigerator | — |
Questions 8-13
Both FALSEs are about motives and originality. Birdseye went to Labrador to trade furs after running out of money, not to study freezing. Swanson reused the airlines' aluminium tray rather than designing a new one. The NOT GIVENs ask about wealth and a world ranking that the passage never mentions.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 9 | TRUE | — |
| 10 | FALSE | — |
| 11 | TRUE | — |
| 12 | FALSE | — |
| 13 | NOT GIVEN | — |
The questions most people get wrong
Beef and mutton are the two kinds, so the one-word answer is 'meat'. Writing 'beef' only covers one of them.
FALSE. Birdseye only became fascinated by Inuit freezing once he was in Labrador. The reason he went was fur trapping and trading.
FALSE. The tray was the same segmented aluminium tray airlines already used. The new things were the name and the advertising.
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The full Cambridge 20 Test 3 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 20, Test 3, Reading Passage 1. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.