Top-Drawer Tools

For most of us our kitchens and the objects in them are the definition of “quotidian” – so ordinary that they seem insignificant and near invisible.

But objects so very close to us are the ones best evolved to our lives and most reflective of them. Every object has a design history; some manufactured objects have corporate “origin myths”. All are worthy of attention.

HAND MIXER

In 1884, Willis Johnson of Cincinnatti, Ohio, became one of the first African Americans to receive a patent. He invented a mechanical egg beater that differed from the ones we might see today in that the crank drove beaters in two large tanks. The idea was that in the professional bakery one tank could be cleaned while the other was in operation. With its large capacity and range of interchangeable beaters, his machine could be said to resemble an early manual Robot-Coupe but the key element – a large cog driving two small ones on the beater shafts – carried on into every cranked hand blender ever since.

In professional kitchens, meringues and cream had traditionally been whipped by hard-working underchefs with huge forearms and balloon whisks, but the hand-cranked whisk, its simple gearing driving the beater heads in an impossible blur of speed, made such delicate confections possible in the home kitchen. It was a brave host who attempted a soufflé before the invention of the hand whisk, and a negligent host who didn’t once it was freely available.

WOODEN SALAD BOWL AND TOSSERS

The wooden salad bowl with matching wooden tossers – preferably purchased while on holiday in Provence and never, ever washed – is a ritual object in the well-equipped home kitchen. Restaurants and other commercial establishments have naturally avoided using a communal serving vessel that can’t be properly cleaned between uses. How on earth did such an odd tradition arise?