There is a massive range of small kitchen appliances available, each of them originally developed either to save time or labour by automating specific tasks such as making bread or ice cream, or to carry out tasks more effectively that is possible by hand, such as grilling food or blending and juicing. OK, you can juice fruits without a juicer, but not the whole fruit and not with the same yield of juice.

It is neither possible nor necessary to describe the history of the development of all small kitchen appliances, but the way by such appliances were developed over time can be exemplified by taking some examples.

The Toaster

Nobody knows who first toasted bread, but it was originally used to extend its life.  As you know bread goes mouldy over time due largely to its moisture content providing ideal conditions for fungal growth. By toasting it, the bread is dried out and less liable to be spoiled in that way. The Romans commonly toasted bread, ‘tostum’ being Latin for scorching.

The toaster is the one small kitchen appliance that no newly-wed couple need buy, and at one time before wedding lists they would have good selection with which to start off married life.  Now, however, their gifts are pre-selected and with the current life of modern toasters they can be pretty sure of having to purchase one within two or three years of being married.

The original toasters would be pieces of wood or metal to hold the bread over a fire, and Victorian couples would have had a good selection of toasting forks among their wedding presents! Hand toasting did not take long and was great fun.  However, once the various uses to which electricity can be put began to be recognized, it wasn’t long before the electric toaster was born. The first was invented in Great Britain in 1893 by Crompton and Co, and reinvented in a more reliable fashion in the USA in 1909.  Although electric, this machine was operated manually and toasted one side at a time.

The modern timed pop-up toaster was developed in 1919 by one Charles Strite, and once sliced bread became readily available with the Wonder Bread of 1930, the toaster became much more popular. Modern toasters have variable timers, individually controllable expandable slots that can take thin slices or thick rolls or baps, and also take full large slices of bread.  Many also have attachments that allow bagels to be heated above the slots. The toaster has come a long way since the days of the toasting fork, but are not as much fun to use!

The Food Processor

While the toaster was developed to carry out a task automatically, though not necessarily in less time, food processors were developed to carry out a job quicker and better. The electric food processor as we know it today was originally developed to save time in professional kitchens, but there was a time before that when mechanical food processors were used.

Manual chopping and shredding of vegetables is time consuming, as any housewife or househusband can testify.  The first labour saving device was likely the knife, whether made of flint or one of the new metals such as copper or bronze. In the greater scale of things, anything other than a knife is very, very recent, and the mechanical slicer is likely the next development.

While toaster development was to make a manual task automated, but not necessarily save time, the development of slicers was to save time.  It was not automatic since the individual had to manually slice the vegetables using a slicer, which eventually became sophisticated with a variety of shaped blades to provide a number of differently sliced and cut vegetables – these are still in common use today.

The first electric food processor was developed by French salesman Pierre Verdan with a view to helping his clients spend less time preparing food and more cooking it. This developed into Robot Coupe in 1960, the first commercial food processor, which was basically a bowl with a rotating blade in its base – much the same as today’s models.

It took a lot longer for the first domestic model to be introduced, and it wasn’t until 1974 that the Magimix appeared, having been sold to the American market in 1973 as the Cuisinart that was developed by Carl G. Sontheimer. These machines are still in use today and after 1973, a whole host of designs were developed and companies such as Kenwood and later Breville got onto the bandwagon.

The Bread Maker

So we have small kitchen appliances developed to save people sitting round fires making toast, to save chefs’ time and get a better job done, and now we come to a third reason, to allow the general population to make something they previously could not:  bread.  If you have ever tried to make your own bread you will know how long it takes and how heartbreaking it is when your masterpiece comes out of the oven like a large brick.

Although making bread is one of the most basic cooking tasks throughout history, and largely responsible for the survival of mankind, it was not until 1986 that the first bread maker was developed for consumer use in Japan, and it was to be 10 years before it became popular in the UK and USA. The main problem in its development appears to have been the kneading and proving stages, and then a properly time cooking period.  These are difficult to automate, but it was done.

These three examples indicate the various incentives behind the invention of small kitchen appliances: to give people more time if not make the process quicker, to speed up a process and improve the end product and finally to enable people to do something using a machine that they could not do manually.

A Buyer’s Guide to Small Kitchen Appliances

1.  When purchasing small kitchen appliances it is very important that you know what you need or you could pay too much for more than you will ever use, or possible even save money but find that your equipment does not do what you want of it. Write down the features you must have, and in a separate list write down what it would be nice to have. Then compare the options available to you and the prices, make sure that the first list is fully met, and get as much of the second as you can within your budget.