Age-old gadgets

[karadekoolaid Profile]

a garlic press?

[Joanbunting Profile]

I'm thinking of 2 'gadgets' that my Mum had during the 50's & continued to use until my parents went into their retirement home in the 90's.

One was a mincer which was fixed, when required, to the table. In use most Mondays for making the last of the joint into Shepherds' pie. The second is a similar gadget & similarly fixed, but for slicing runner beans. Only used when they were in-season, of course!!

I've still got Mum's Spong mincer but for runner beans I use a hand tool like this :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/KitchenCraft-K ... B0001IXA9Y

Clive I never use a garlic press just a bit iof salt and the back of a heavy knife - much easier to clean!

[Stokey Sue Profile]

a garlic press?

I wondered about that specific application, but technically it’s only a miniature version of a potato ricer or spätzle press

The Spong mincer(or meat grinder) is a surprisingly early Victorian invention, I saw it on a TV program where the ability to make that grey institutional mince was a great advance, genuinely, as workhouse paupers and orphans with poor dentition could have mince and tatties, which is reasonably nourishing.

[strictlysalsaclare Profile]

My mum had a Spong mincer and a runner bean slicer as well.

[jeral Profile]

I haven't thought of a new gadget using silicon that couldn't be made from another material, but silicon soft grip handles might count. Ice cube trays and some bakeware might count too as it enables content to be pushed out so is effectively a different product.

Automatic but non-electric coffee percolators like the Cona ones must have come later since no-one had coffee in Victorian times.

Lattice pastry-rollers? (I failed dismally once trying to replicate such by hand cutting.)

[jeral Profile]

I wondered about that specific application, but technically it’s only a miniature version of a potato ricer or spätzle press....

Maybe miniaturisation has to count as it was part of the revolution of being able to do "industrial" things at home quickly that were impossible or unduly arduous previously. I'd think that many gadgets are scaled down from industrial somethings or other aren't they?

[scullion Profile]

when i was little we had a potato peeler that was fixed onto the cold tap and which spun around in the middle, bashing the potatoes against the gritty walls. we later had a similar thing that was an addition to the kenwood chef.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Automatic but non-electric coffee percolators like the Cona ones must have come later since no-one had coffee in Victorian times.

The Victorians drank quite a lot of coffee, Mrs Beeton goes into some detail, and also gives recipes for coffee cakes and desserts. There were coffee shops and coffee stalls around.

https://quintessentialruminations.wordpress.com/2017/09/22/mrs-beeton-on-how-to-prepare-coffee/

[Wic Profile]

Thinking of the Spong-type mincers, we have one in the local museum and almost everyone rushes up to it, winds the handle and says their mother or grandmother had one. We get wonderful stories from them about how it was their job on a Monday to mince the remains of the joint and what they would put in it for their cottage pies. It always seems to me that they had to be easier to wash up that the modern electric ones.

Not food related, but we also have a big mangle with a pair of combinations rolled half way through it and that always gets a good reaction.

[jeral Profile]

Stokey Sue, thanks. Amazing that percolators were made here as early as 1753. Your linked article also refers to penny cups of coffee in 1663, which must have been a fortune. Even by Victorian times I can't imagine many people without silver spoons could afford any coffee but I'm learning every day via this thread's contributions.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I know that street corner coffee stall were a common thing in the 1920s, and I think that they go back quite a lot earlier

Good Stokey author and historian Lee Jackson compiles the superb Dictionary of Victorian London on line, and this says that there were coffee shops for all levels of society

https://www.victorianlondon.org/food/coffeerooms.htm

I suspect that making coffee at home was more middle or upper class, but drinking it while out and about was done by everyone it seems, until Camp coffee came along in the 1880s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Coffee

[jeral Profile]

Thanks once again Stokey Sue. Very informative. I wonder how quaint or antiquated our coffee houses might seem to people a hundred years from now, along with everything else of course

[jeral Profile]

Another post-Victorian gadget might be a draw-through knife sharpener. There were only (<-she says with complete confidence, er not) steels and whet stones, both now available in ceramic versions.

Oh, and rotary can openers, either hand or wall-mounted ones with the magnetic lid lifter. Incidentally, the hand one I bought a year or so ago has a magnet at the top, being why I bought it. I wonder why they didn't appear simultaneously with the magnetic wall-mounted ones decades ago.

[mark111757 Profile]

Mum had one of these whfb the the bro grew up. It weighed a ton but could grind up most anything. Was véry good with left over roast beef and corned beef from Sunday lunch to make hash. Left over veg too. Did a nice job with cranberries to make sauce around the holidays.

Good memories just don't drop it on you foot

serveimage (13).jpeg (4.31 KiB) Viewed 7313 times

[jeral Profile]

We didn't have a mincer, probably because we weren't well off enough to have left over meat. My dad bought one when he was about 70 and specifically used it to make his own "proper" burgers instead of thin "cardboard" disks. He liked good grub and made good use of it.

mark111757, he left it clamped on all the time - maybe to save his feet from what you say!

[Stokey Sue Profile]

Also my mum used to find the butterfly nut that fastened the clamp quite hard work, perhaps your father found it unsuited to 70+ year old fingers jeral?

A food processor is not as good as a mincer/grinder for actual mincing, but it's fine for chopping the occasional bit of leftover cooked meat, so I don't miss having one

[jeral Profile]

Stokey Sue, I said "left it clamped" slightly whimsically as it could only be cleaned by disengaging it. More likely it was a routine of: Use, clean, re-clamp ready for next use, the same as I leave the processor out. That's all counter level though. It's when lifting things in and out of cupboards that hobnailed boots are a must

[Rainbow Profile]

We had a mincer like that.
I remember my father making dry breadcrumbs with it. He'd put all the leftover bits of bread in a tray at the bottom of the oven to dry out when the oven was on. Then he'd grind them up and make some sort of bait for fishing!!

I think my mother used it for the more conventional meat mincing!

[Renee Profile]

I can remember from my childhood, that my dad used aniseed oil on bread for to attract the tiny minnows used as bait for fishing. It was in a plastic container which was placed in the water.

[Wic Profile]

And what about tin openers? Do you remember those spike things you were supposed to jab into the top of a tin then lever the lid up all the way round, leaving a jagged edge? I never did, because I could never pierce the tin in the first place.