DO you have drawers, cupboards or garages full of redundant kitchen gadgets? The likely answer is 'yes'. According to research by Tap Warehouse in 2022, the average UK household is cluttered with $822 of neglected culinary kits, the most unused being the cafetière: one in four owners have never taken theirs out of its box.
The word gadget usually applies to a tool designed for a specific purpose. We couldn't imagine kitchen life without some of them, yet digital scales, can openers and timers were all new once and seen as fangled or fashionable.
Most gadgets, however helpful, have a lifespan -fondue sets, yoghurt makers, electric meat carvers as fashion and technology move on.
Sometimes, several stages of development exist together. Take the whisk. Almost everyone has at least one, but it had to be conceived and there had to be a reason for it to exist: that it was bloody hard work whisking eggs and sugar for an hour or more for a meringue or cake with a bunch of birch twigs. The balloon whisk-only invented in the 19th century— made meringues more luscious in a fraction of the time, which informed the hand-cranked whisk, the stand mixer, then the electric hand whisk. Which stages of its evolution do you own?
Similarly, there are dead ends: a time when meat lockers and ice houses were obsolete was once inconceivable. The best example is the clockwork spit jack, for roasting meat by the fire. Roast meat used to be enjoyed only by the wealthy: it required a great deal of fuel and a dog or a servant to turn the spit, who, thus engaged, was unable to do anything else. Waterwheel-powered and steam-powered jacks helped, but things completely changed with the 1740s invention of the clockwork jack, which was weighted and wound like a grandfather clock.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 27, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 27, 2024-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
