Have you ever thought about how the things we use every day in the kitchen came to be? Let’s go back in time to learn about the interesting past of one of these useful tools: the mixer.
When mixing first started
Around the middle of the 1800s, inventors all over the world were trying to find better and faster ways to mix ingredients. This is where our story starts. A tinner from Baltimore named Ralph Collier patented the first mixer with moving parts in 1856. E.P. Griffith made the whisk, a new tool for mixing ingredients, just a year later. The hand-turned circular egg beater that the Monroe brothers, J.F. and E.P., made famous was also patented in the US in 1859.
When the Dover Stamping Company saw these early versions, they bought the Monroe Brothers’ patent. Dover egg beaters, which people in the US love, became a well-known name. People thought these beaters were so great that the famous Dover beater was used in a delicious treat recipe called “Hur-Mon Bavarian Cream” in the Gazette newspaper of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in February 1929.
Greetings from the Electric Age!
Thanks to the clever mind of American creator Rufus Eastman, the first electric mixer didn’t come out until 1885. Large industrial mixers made by the Hobart Manufacturing Company, on the other hand, really changed the business world. They made a revolutionary new type of mixer in 1914 that changed the field for good.
At the beginning of the 20th century, people liked the Hobart KitchenAid and the Sunbeam Mixmaster, two well-known American names. But even though they were very popular, most homes didn’t have an electric mixer until the 1920s, when they started to be widely used in homes.
A Big Deal: The Stand Mixer
Herbert Johnston had a “eureka!” moment in 1908 while watching a cook use a metal spoon to mix bread dough. He was an engineer for the Hobart Manufacturing Company. He thought there had to be an easier way to do it, so he set out to make a machine that would do it for him.
The 20-gallon mixer made by Johnston was standard equipment in most big bakeries by 1915. The Kitchen Aid Food Preparer, which later became known as the stand mixer, was made by the Hobart Manufacturing Company just four years later, in 1919. This groundbreaking invention was used in restaurants all over the country very quickly.
In the 1800s, rotary beaters were turned by hand. Today, electric motors and the stand mixer have made this important cooking tool much better. Many changes have been made to it to make our lives easier in the kitchen.
Don’t forget to enjoy the history of your trusty mixer the next time you make cookies or a delicious cake batter. That shows how creative people are and how much they want to make things easier.
Aside from the mixer, the meat grinder is another useful cooking tool with an interesting past. This machine, which is also called a “meat mincer” in the UK, has been used to chop and mix raw or cooked meat, fish, veggies, and other things.
In the 1800s, Karl Drais made the first form of this amazing tool, which started the meat grinder’s history. In the beginning, meat grinders were turned by hand, forcing the meat through a metal plate with tiny holes to make long, thin threads of meat.
As technology got better and more people got access to electricity, companies started making meat grinders that were driven. These modern electric grinders make it possible to process several pounds of beef evenly and smoothly. Some types come with extra parts that can be used for things like making sausage, kibbe and juice. This has greatly increased the number of things that meat grinders can be used for.
Remember the journey and creativity behind your meat grinder the next time you chop meat for a savoury dish or try making sausages at home. That’s proof of how kitchen tools have changed over time to make cooking easier and more fun.
