Cookware

During the nineteenth century the majority of cooking pots had been made of cast iron. A major United Kingdom company manufacturing cooking pots was Kenricks of Birmingham. Lighter wares were of sheet tin. Enameled cast iron was developed in the 1850s. It was easier to clean and more attractive, despite a limited color range. A mottled blue was one of the commonest colors. Germany, Austria, and France were all significant producers. The 1870s saw innovations in the metal industry. Pressed mild steel appeared as a result of the Bessemer and Siemens processes. Aluminum wares were produced in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom from the 1880s. The American West Bend Company of West Bend, Wisconsin, began production of aluminum cookware in 1911. Its main customer was the mail-order company Sears, Roebuck.

The new cooking methods of gas and later electricity had an effect on cookware. Enameled iron saucepans were unpredictable and milk pans boiled over due to the uneven conductivity of iron and enamel. American manufacturers did continue with cast iron, offering bright enameled colors on the outside. British manufacturers moved to steel and aluminum.

The cookware industries of Europe and America went into wartime production between 1914 and 1918 and emerged with improved technologies. The most popular British brands were Tower, Diamond Brand, Swan, and Goat. Steel cookware was often enameled in either green or beige with contrasting rims in a darker shade. In postwar Germany, the once mighty BMW company had to cease producing aircraft engines and move into pots and pans to survive.

Aluminum wares were well suited to electric stoves. In 1934 the Wear Ever Company produced a range with heat resistant plastic handles. Stainless steel, an alloy of steel, nickel, and chromium developed in the 1920s, offered better resistance to rust and acidic corrosion. West Bend introduced their Waterless Cooker in 1921. Based on the suggestion of one of its salesmen, the lid of the cooker was fitted with clamps that prevented the escape of steam during cooking, making the addition of water unnecessary. They sold well and led to the introduction of a range of waterless wares known as the Flavo-Seal line. The U.S. Revere Copper and Brass Company developed a range of stainless steel pans with copper plated bottoms. Marketed in 1939 as Revere Ware, they gave better heat distribution.

In addition to stainless steel materials, chrome plated steel and heatproof glass like Pyrex was becoming popular. Colored aluminum was also fashionable during the late 1940s and 1950s. Anodized aluminum wares have a satin gloss finish and were introduced in 1946 by the Aluminum Utensil Company. West Bend had introduced anodized wares with colored dyes by 1950; these materials improved the aesthetics of cookware during the 1950s when the look of a kitchen became more important to manufacturers and consumers. This trend continued throughout the late twentieth century.

The first nonstick pan was introduced in 1956 by a Frenchman, Marc Gregoire, and his wife, Colette. Gregoire had experimented with the low friction substance PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) to produce a smoother running fishing reel. His wife suggested that it would have more commercial success if applied to cookware. The resulting Tefal company became a brand leader as nonstick Teflon-coated pans became popular during the 1960s and 1970s.

Traditional manufacturers also received a boost during the 1970s as a result of public interest in antiques and the positive reassessment of much Victorian taste. A refurbished range or new Aga in a suburban home required the “right” pans. The French firm of Le Creuset benefited enormously. Founded in 1925 at Fresnoy-Le Grand at St. Quentin, its heavy, hand-finished enameled cast-iron pots and pans were just right.

Cultural and social trends also influenced cookware. The success of Asian and Eastern restaurants during the 1960s and 1970s led to a rising interest in cooking such dishes at home. In the United Kingdom, the Habitat stores led the way, selling woks, rice steamers, and chicken bricks. Another trend was toward professional cookware as the Western media began to promote “lifestyle” eating and drinking in the 1980s. For those inspired by celebrity chefs, popular choices were the Elysee Line of 1981 by Cuisinox, a French company established in the 1930s, or Calphalon of 1978, a range of commercial, hard anodized aluminum wares made in Ohio. Another serious choice was Le Pentole designed in 1979 for Industrie Casalinghi Mori in Italy by Nika Sala. This is a stylish modern reworking of a stacking steamer with five pans.

A more recent innovation has been the specialized pan designed for use away from the stove burner (hob). The Tefal Le Saucier is a nonstick saucepan with an integral mixing paddle powered by an electric spindle through its base. It sits on an individual hot-plate with electronic controls for heating, timing, and stirring. Equally French is the Tibos electric crepe maker, with a nonstick griddle and spreading device.

Cookware has largely retained its traditional forms throughout the twentieth century; the main advances have been in the better performing and lighter materials used and the aesthetic choices available. Most cookware performs well, dependent on price, and both manufacturers and consumers are equally influenced by popular fashions and tastes.

Size, Speed, and Price

The desktop personal computer has become the dominant computer type for business and home use. Hardware has grown in size in order to accommodate more devices, provide more storage capacity, and generally enhance performance. In the mid-1980s, the typical PC consisted of a 12-inch (30 cm) monitor, a keyboard, and a central processing unit (CPU) that accommodated a 20-Mb (megabyte) hard-disk drive and a 5.25-inch (13 cm) floppy-disk drive, and had a number of ports (connection sockets) for optional peripheral devices. The printer was the most common peripheral device. By the late 1990s, 14- and 17-inch (36 cm and 43 cm) monitors were standard, in order to provide improved display of pictorial content. The CPU, usually in a tower format, typically accommodated a several gigabyte hard-disk drive, a 3.5-inch (9 cm) floppy-disc drive, a CD-ROM (compact disc read-only memory) or DVD (digital versatile disk) drive, and a modem. It had sufficient ports to take a range of peripheral devices, including scanners, digital cameras, CD writers, loudspeakers, and extra storage drives, such as the Zip or Jaz drives. The CD-ROM, introduced in 1984, has become the standard format for applications software, games programs, and educational software such as multimedia encyclopedias. Recordable CDs (CD-Rs), requiring a CD writer, became available in 1990. Introduced in 1995, the DVD can hold a full-length motion picture.

However, the key determinants of performance, the microprocessor and the RAM chip, have grown in processing power, speed, and capacity without growing in size. Since its introduction in 1993, the 32-bit Intel Pentium chip, the dominant PC microprocessor chip, has evolved from running at a speed of 60 MHz (megahertz) to 600 MHz. A 64-Mb RAM chip is now regarded as no more than average. Therefore, while desktop models dominate, portable computers are now available in sizes ranging from the palmtop to the notebook. In the 1970s, portability was more of a relative concept. The first portable computer, the Baby suitcase computer of 1976, was a CPU without a monitor, like the Altair desktop. Even by 1981, when the Osborne I portable computer was introduced, portable computers were still suitcase-size and referred to as luggables rather than portables. Compaq, which introduced a portable PC in 1982, was the first company to really focus on the portable computer market. By 1986, the portable computer had shrunk from the luggable to the briefcase-size laptop, and by 1989, from the laptop to the thinner notebook. The notebook is the smallest type of PC that retains full functionality; it can accommodate hard disk, floppy disk, and CD-ROM drive as well as an internal modem. Subnotebooks and hand-held palmtops or personal organizers economize on size by having limited data storage facilities and small keyboards, but can transfer data to desktop or notebook computers by wired or infrared linkages. Some palmtop computers, such as the Apple Newton, introduced in 1993, omit the keyboard entirely and instead allow input to be written onto an LCD “notepad” using a stylus. They have built-in optical character recognition (OCR) software.

Prices have continued to fall, thanks to economies of scale, increases in production efficiency, and competitive market forces. While big American manufacturers, including IBM, Dell, and Compaq, still have sizeable market shares, the nature of computer retailing has allowed small companies to prosper. Purchasing direct from the manufacturer or from computer warehouses via mail order or electronic commerce has become a significant feature of the personal computer trade. Although personal computers may be ostensibly made by European, Canadian, or U.S. companies, in this context “making” means assembling, and the majority of the manufacturing process takes place in the Far East. Japanese companies, such as Toshiba, Sony, and Fujitsu, have been particularly successful in the portable computer market. Portable computers continue to be significantly more expensive than desktop models offering equivalent performance. This largely reflects the relatively high cost of flat liquid crystal display (LCD) screens in comparison with conventional cathode ray tube-based monitors.

The Influence of the Fitted Kitchen

While feminists and household economists of the rational school had long espoused the concept of the fitted kitchen, few homes had fitted kitchens until after World War II. The United States was well ahead of Britain in this respect, and U.S. companies began to use the desirability of the fitted kitchen as a marketing vehicle for a range of appliances in the late 1940s. In terms of cookers, this brought an emphasis on ergonomic design and materials. Surplus wartime stocks meant that aluminum became an affordable lightweight option for some cooker parts. Features such as glass doors, introduced in the 1930s, and eye-level grills were heralded as aids to efficiency and economy of movement. The 1950s fitted kitchen also prompted the revival of the split-level cooker with a waist-level or eye-level oven. The term “split level” is used to signify that the cooking units are not integrated vertically, but dispersed horizontally. Split-level electric cookers first appeared in the early years of electric cookers and were initially the more common design in the United States. However, their double width meant that they were too large to fit comfortably in smaller kitchens. In the 1960s, in search of new selling points, manufacturers developed features that extended the potential for producing meals requiring different types of cooking. One option was the cooker with two ovens, allowing simultaneous cooking at different temperatures. Oven fans helped to distribute the heat more evenly, facilitating the use of the whole oven, while attachments, such as rotisserie spits, tailored the oven for specialized cooking.

The standard cooktop held four fast radiant rings, and boiling ring technology changed little from the 1930s to 1966, when the ceramic electric hob, or cooktop, appeared. The ceramic hob was the commercial result of an accidental discovery at the Corning Glass Works in the United States in 1952. A malfunctioning furnace produced an opalescent, tough glass with distinctive thermal properties. Heat from bare electric elements placed beneath the glass, and demarcated by patterns on the upper surface, is conducted vertically, but not horizontally. Not only is the ceramic hob extremely efficient, but with its flat surface, it is easy to clean and available as a work surface when not in use for cooking. Manufacturers also gave much attention to the cleanability of ovens. One “self-cleaning” method, introduced in 1969, was the application of a grease-resistant coating to the oven interior. This is known as catalytic cleaning. Another method, introduced in 1978, was pyrolitic cleaning, whereby a short burst of maximum heat after cooking prevents the build-up of hardened grease. Cleanliness was also the motive for the development of the electric cooker hood, which is placed directly above the hob to absorb greasy vapors and cooking smells. Such hoods contain an extractor or exhaust fan and filters. Depending on the hood design, the extracted air may either be recirculated in the kitchen after filtration or vented outdoors.

Since the 1970s, when the fitted kitchen approached its peak of popularity, manufacturers have designed kitchen appliances to fit in with the standard sizes of kitchen units. This also prompted the evolution of the split-level cooker into the modular cooker, whereby the oven, hob, and grill might be completely separate, self-contained units. Modularity has allowed consumers to mix and match gas and electric cooking units to suit their individual needs or preferences. The German manufacturer Neff has been particularly noted for its modular cookers. The Italian company Zanussi has focused more on offering a range of colors, finishes, and style details. For example, the Zanussi ID cooker (1999) could be tailored in terms of types of doors, handles, and knobs, as well as color and finish, to achieve a customized specification. Another trend, associated with a revived interest in cooking as an art rather than a necessity, has created a consumer market for the cooker built to professional catering standards and usually high-tech in design. The latest development in hob technology is the induction hob, which dispenses with heating elements in favor of magnetic heat induction coils. While a British company, the Falkirk Iron Company, experimented with induction cooking in the 1920s, the idea lay dormant until the 1990s. Price, familiarity, and availability of types of energy were the prevailing influences on choice of cooker in 1900, but today the equivalent factors are more likely to be price, performance, convenience, and design. These factors mean that gas and electric cookers are likely to co-exist on more or less equal terms for the foreseeable future.

Margarine

In its original form, margarine was merely cheap and no more convenient than butter. The first margarine was developed by a French chemist, Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, in response to a national competition in 1867 to find a cheaper alternative to butter. The name came from the Greek word for pearl, as margarine was whitish rather than yellow. It was based on animal fats such as suet. In Britain, an improved version, developed by the Dutch butter merchants Jan and Anton Jurgens was marketed as “butterine” until 1887, when that was forbidden. In 1903, the development of a process called hydrogenation by the French chemist Paul Sabatier made it possible to use vegetable oils as the main ingredient of margarine. By bubbling hydrogen through liquid oils in the presence of nickel, which acts as a catalyst, the oils are hardened. However, hydrogenation also had the effect of changing unsaturated oils to saturated fats, which are less easily metabolized. The introduction of healthier margarines that were high in polyunsaturated oils, such as sunflower or safflower oil, had the added benefit of producing a softer, more spreadable margarine. The convenience of spreading “straight from the fridge” was used as a major selling point for soft margarines. The more recent spreadable butters are actually a more or less equal mixture of butter and vegetable oils.