Welcome to another episode of Eating the Past as we continue our deep dive into spices.
As I have been listening to our episodes on herbs, spices, and recipes made with delicious
seasonings, I started thinking about cooking technology. How did people grind spices before
we could buy them in those handy little bottles – pre-ground?
Last week, I talked about how I thought I knew the answer—mostly—but then I decided to
consult a book on cooking technology over the centuries by Bee Wilson, entitled "Consider the Fork:
A History of How We Cook and Eat."
I ended last week’s episode with a teaser about when the new-fangled and very efficient machines –
food processors and blenders made an appearance. This week, I’ll talk about that history.
It is probably unsurprising that the first machines for chopping and grinding and speeding
up food preparation were for restaurants, who prepare foods and spices in bulk. Wilson describes
one of the first as a big drum with a rotating blade called the Robot Coupe, developed in 1963 by
the French inventor, Pierre Verdun.
Like modern food processors, it had buttons for stop, start and pulse. But it was big! Enter
American Carl Sontheimer who had been an inventor and engineer for decades and who loved
French food.
Remember this is the era of Julia Child, who had stormed North America with her cookbook and
later tv show. When Sonntheimer learned about the Robot Coupe in the early 1970s, he decided to
transform this machine into something appropriate in size and cost for homes.
In coming up with a name for his new device, he wanted to recognize the role of French cooking in the
development of the appliance, so he called it the Cuisinart. As Wilson notes, this first Cuisinart
was expensive, so it wasn’t flying off the store shelves when it was launched in 1973.
Enter Craig Claiborne, famed NY Times cooking critic and chef. I don’t know about listeners here,
but I have a couple of Claiborne go-to recipes that I still use despite the fact that they are decades
old.
Between his review of the Cuisinart and one in Gourmet magazine, suddenly the Cuisinart was
popular – and people were paying high prices for it. Wilson quotes Claiborne’s review – he said it was
like “the printing press, cotton gin, steamboat, paper clips, Kleenex” etc. – a great invention.
The other thing that launched the Cuisinart (and the craze for fancy cooking) in the 1970s was the
development of specialty cooking stores such as Sur La Table, founded in Seattle in 1971.
Wilson explains that customers bought the Cuisinart, then came back for other fancy gadgets –
“The machine had got them hooked on the whole process of ambitious cooking.”
Now I should mention there were other blenders and appliances before the Cuisinart – and also
electric mixers with attachments. We used to live in Ohio, very close to the Kitchen Aid outlet store, which
was near the company that first manufactured the stand mixer in the early 20th century,
Hobart Manufacturing.
But Cuisinart really spoke to the kinds of spice mixtures and spreads and sauces that are hard to
make by hand. Want to make hummus – it is a cinch in a food processor. Same with pesto. Want to
create a spice blend and store it in a cabinet? A food processor or an electronic coffee grinder will do
the job quickly.
I will say, as Wilson also notes, that for all its convenience and speed and efficiency, sometimes the
food processor takes the joy out of cooking. There is nothing like the smell (or taste) or fun of
blending together the spices for a garam masala or a curry mixture in a mortar and pestle, then dumping
it into hot sizzling ghee.
So, don’t throw away those food processors, but if you get a chance, take the slow and hard approach
once in a while – grind your spices in a mortar and pestle – the ancient way.
Stay tuned for next week’s episode on Eating the Past at noon on Sundays, right before the Splendid
Table on your UPR station.
