page_title: Old Bay Seasoning
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Old Bay Seasoning / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Baltimore Steam Packet Company's City of Richmond steamboat in a 1949 photo
context_page_description: Old Bay Seasoning is a blend of herbs and spices that is marketed in the United States by McCormick & Company, and originally created in Baltimore, Maryland.
  The seasoning mix includes celery salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, and paprika. It is regionally popular, specifically in Maryland, as well as in the Mid-Atlantic States, the Southern States, and parts of New England and the Gulf Coast.
context_section_description: Old Bay Seasoning is named after the Old Bay Line, a passenger ship line that plied the waters of the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia, in the early 1900s. In 1939, a Jewish-German immigrant named Gustav Brunn started the Baltimore Spice Company. 
  The origins of the company began in Wertheim, Germany, where Brunn started a wholesale spice and seasoning business selling to food industries, seeing an opportunity as spices were in especially short supply amidst hyperinflation in the aftermath of World War I. Due to rising anti-Semitism as the Nazi Party rose to power, the company moved to Frankfurt, Germany; however, on the night of November 10, 1938, a massive pogrom against Jews, known as Kristallnacht, led to Brunn being arrested by Nazi soldiers and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. 
  According to Brunn's son, Gustav's wife paid a large sum of money to a lawyer for him to be released, and as they had already applied for and received American passports, were able to escape with their two children to New York City, and later Baltimore, Maryland, where Brunn had family. There, having brought with him only a small spice grinder,  Brunn first produced the "Delicious Brand Shrimp and Crab Seasoning", which was later renamed Old Bay.
  The rights to the seasoning brand were purchased by McCormick & Co in 1990. McCormick continued to offer Old Bay in the classic yellow can. Gustav Brunn had worked for McCormick for a short time before starting his own spice business.
  McCormick has a number of other products under the Old Bay banner, including seasoning packets for crab cakes, salmon patties and tuna, tartar sauce, cocktail sauce, and seafood batter mix. They also make other seasoning blends that mix Old Bay seasoning with garlic, lemon, brown sugar, herbs and blackened seasonings. McCormick has offered a lower-sodium version of Old Bay Seasoning.
  In 2017, McCormick changed the packaging from metal cans to plastic containers in an effort to reduce the packaging costs.
caption: The Old Bay Line, after which Old Bay is named
exif: {}