Kitchen Tools With Surprising Histories

Kitchen Tools With Surprising Histories: The forks, openers, mixers and pans we use without thinking each have unexpected origin stories involving scandalized clergy, military rations, radar labs and lab accidents. Many tools arrived long after the problem they solve, and others were invented by frustrated home cooks rather than engineers. Their histories trace how war, technology and changing ideas about manners and women's work reshaped the kitchen.

Maria Argyropoulina: This Byzantine princess shocked Venice around 1004 by eating with a golden fork, and when she died of plague, the churchman Peter Damian suggested it was divine punishment for her vanity.

Catherine de' Medici: She is often credited with bringing the fork to France when she married the future Henry II in 1533, though historians say the tool did not catch on there for many decades.

Cardinal Richelieu: Legend says he had the points of his table knives ground down in 1637 because a guest kept picking his teeth with one, and Louis XIV later banned pointed knives at the table, giving us the rounded dinner knife.

Nicolas Appert: The French confectioner won Napoleon's 12,000 franc prize around 1810 for sealing food in heated glass jars, inventing canning decades before anyone understood why it worked.

Ezra Warner: Tin cans existed for nearly 50 years before he patented a dedicated can opener in 1858. Until then, soldiers opened cans with bayonets, knives and even gunfire.

William Lyman: In 1870 he patented the first can opener with a rotating cutting wheel, the basic design that still sits in kitchen drawers today.

Dover Egg Beater: Patented in 1870 by Turner Williams, this rotary beater with two interlocking whisks became so popular that 'Dover' became a generic name for egg beaters in American cookbooks.

Copper Bowl: French chefs whipped egg whites in copper for centuries, and science later explained why: copper ions bond with egg proteins, creating a more stable foam that rarely over whips.

Percy Spencer: While working on radar for Raytheon in 1945, he noticed a candy bar melting in his pocket. The first microwave oven, the Radarange, stood nearly 6 feet tall and weighed about 750 pounds.

Roy Plunkett: In 1938 the DuPont chemist discovered Teflon by accident in a refrigerant canister, and in 1954 Frenchman Marc Grégoire coated a frying pan with it at his wife Colette's suggestion, founding the Tefal brand.

Bessie Littleton: In 1913 the wife of a Corning scientist baked a cake in a sawed off glass battery jar, proving heat resistant glass could work in the oven and leading to the launch of Pyrex in 1915.

Earl Tupper: His airtight plastic containers flopped in stores until saleswoman Brownie Wise built the home party sales model, which turned Tupperware into a cultural phenomenon.

John Landis Mason: He patented his screw top jar on November 30, 1858, and the words 'Patent Nov 30th 1858' were embossed on millions of jars for decades after the patent expired.

Josephine Cochrane: A wealthy Illinois socialite tired of servants chipping her fine china, she designed the first commercially successful dishwasher in 1886, and her company eventually became part of KitchenAid.

KitchenAid: The stand mixer got its name around 1919 when a Hobart executive's wife tested a prototype and declared it the best kitchen aid she had ever had.

Charles Strite: Frustrated by burnt toast in a factory cafeteria, the Minnesota mechanic invented the pop up toaster with a timer, patenting it in 1921.

Carl Sontheimer: After spotting a French restaurant machine called the Robot Coupe, he adapted it for home cooks and launched the Cuisinart food processor in 1973.

Irving Naxon: Inspired by his grandmother's slow cooked Lithuanian bean stew, he patented a slow cooking appliance in 1940 called the Naxon Beanery, later renamed the Crock Pot.

Samuel Henshall: The English clergyman received the first known patent for a corkscrew in 1795, adding a small disc that stopped the screw from going too deep and helped twist the cork free.

Fannie Farmer: Her 1896 Boston Cooking School Cook Book championed precise, level measurements instead of vague directions like 'a handful,' earning her the title 'mother of level measurements.'

Microplane: Originally sold as a woodworking rasp, it was reinvented as a kitchen tool in 1994 after a Canadian home cook borrowed one from her husband's workshop to zest an orange.

Alfred L. Cralle: The African American inventor patented the mechanical ice cream scoop in 1897, designing a one handed tool that dropped perfect scoops and kept ice cream from sticking.

Chopsticks: Thousands of years ago in China they were first used for cooking, reaching into pots of boiling water or oil, and only became eating utensils centuries later.

InSinkErator: Architect John Hammes invented the garbage disposal in 1927 to make cleanup easier for his wife, and some American cities banned the device for years over sewer concerns.