female narrator: From fire to fryers,
humans are famous for their endless
food-related innovations.
Some were half-baked.
Some burnt out.
And a few stand above the rest.
[cheering]
It's the Top 10 Kitchen Innovations
That Changed Food Forever.
From the Great Pyramids to the greatest things
atop the food pyramid,
humans have been appreciating deep fried foods
for thousands of years.
The Egyptians were among the first
to cook by submersion in hot oil,
making their versions of fried dough
in the 2000s B.C.
The Romans created their version
of deep fried chicken called pullum frontonianum,
detailed in the ancient cookbook, "Apicius,"
named after the ancient food blogger,
Marcus Gavius Apicius.
The method spread like a grease fire.
13th century cookbooks from Spain and Portugal
have recipes for deep fried fish,
and falafel appeared in the Middle East
while the Japanese started making tempura
in the 1500s.
Deep frying technology advanced in the 1800s
with donuts emerging in 1809.
And we can't emphasize enough
how thankful we are for this.
Thanks to cast iron pans
becoming largely available at this time,
anyone could make the newly invented French fries.
These days, just about anything can be deep fried,
including bubble gum, ice cream,
Coca-Cola, and butter.
Before receiving an Instant Pot from your mom,
you'd never heard of a pressure cooker,
except for when your friend talks about
their super demanding finance job.
But the process of pressure cooking
was invented over 350 years ago.
Denis Papin, a French physicist,
invented the steam digestor
in 1679,
putting foods in an airtight vessel
to build up steam pressure,
causing liquid inside to boil at a higher temperature.
This simulated braising, or simmering,
in a shorter period of time.
Similarly, people working in a pressure cooker
go gray by 26.
Home pressure cookers became popular
during World War II,
and the electric pressure cooker
was invented in 1991.
But the version we know today,
and Amazon's valedictorian,
the Instant Pot,
was introduced by Robert Wang in 2010.
The Instant Pot is a multifunctional cooker,
which can cook fast as a pressure cooker
and slow as a slow cooker.
It's rapidly becoming as ubiquitous
as the other kitchen appliances on this list.
We have a fancy French chef to thank
for the most utilitarian of pantry inventions--
canning.
In 1795, the French were desperate
for a way to economically feed their military,
so they offered a 12,000-franc prize
for the best food preservation invention.
Nicolas Appert was determined to win.
Worth $250,000 today,
that prize could buy a lot of aprons.
He began by packing foods into champagne bottles
and sealing it with a combination
of cheese and slaked lime,
or calcium hydroxide.
Appert's method took food in sealed glass containers
and heated them for a long time.
The heat killed any microorganisms
inside the containers,
and the seal prevented any from getting in.
Appert won the prize in 1810,
and soon, other inventors had applied his technique
with metal cans.
Cans became a main source of food
for militaries and explorers around the world.
Ironically, the can opener wasn't invented
until 1858.
Since 1000 B.C.,
people have understood
that leftovers are best kept cold.
Back then, the Chinese cut and stored ice,
realizing it made their food last longer.
The Egyptians left pots of water out overnight
to create ice.
And the Greeks stored snow
in insulated pits.
There were no advancements until the ice box
was invented in the 1860s,
which worked like a modern cooler.
But access to ice was a Kardashian-level luxury.
Most people resorted to canning, smoking,
drying, or salting to preserve their foods.
Smoked milk? Dried eggs?
There must be a better way.
Finally, in 1899,
technology caught up to the public's need
for cold beer
when Albert T. Marshall patented
the first mechanical refrigerator.
Fridge sales took time to heat up.
They were in 8% of homes in the '30s,
45% in the '40s,
and today, 99% of American households have one.
The other 1% are college dorm rooms
that couldn't fit one.
Thanks to the modern oven,
baking a cake is a piece of cake.
However, this is a relatively new convenience.
Many ancient civilizations,
including Egyptians, Romans, and Jews
used stone or brick ovens to bake bread.
However, the first iteration of a stove
may be clay cooking pots made in China
around 20,000 years ago.
One of the first modern kitchen stoves
that we're familiar with today was built
in France in 1490.
However, these models didn't have a bake button.
They were heated by fire in a separate chamber,
regulated by just how many logs you threw in.
in 1834, James Sharp invented
the first commercially available gas stove,
which became popular for its ability
to regulate temperature.
The first electric stove
was patented in 1892.
Ironically, people today love going to fancy restaurants
to overpay for pizza cooked the old-fashioned way,
in a woodfired oven.
From, "Is this clean or dirty,"
to, "No fair, Mom! I emptied it last time,"
the dishwasher created a new category
of family arguments while revolutionizing
kitchen work.
From the dawn of plates until 1886,
people were stuck scrubbing and rinsing their dishes.
Joel Houghton invented the first dishwasher
in 1850, but it was barely effective.
Ancient peoples used handfuls of sand
to scour dirty dishes and utensils.
They then discovered that the ashes
of some plants were useful to remove grease,
leading to developing soaps.
The soapwort plant was good for scrubbing,
so people began growing it near their cleaning stations
until the kitchen sponge was invented.
The great leap forward occurred in 1886,
when Josephine Cochran invented the machine
that would prevent millions of roommate fights.
Josephine hosted many dinner parties.
Fed up with the way her servants damaged fine china
during washing,
she constructed the first dishwasher
that cleaned by spraying dishes
with hot pressurized water,
winning the highest award
at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
Household dishwashers weren't common until the 1950s,
but the design was still based on Josephine's machine.
The Romans are back,
this time, for inventing toast.
Roman soldiers toasted
to prolong the life of their bread rations.
The word "toastum" in Latin means
to scorch, or to burn.
It took a shockingly long time
for toasting to advance past open flame,
but when it happened--
like the printing press revolutionized
academia, art, and communication--
the toaster revolutionized... breakfast.
The electric toaster went through more updates
than an iPhone
after its invention in 1893.
The first model only toasted one side of the bread
at a time, and had to be flipped manually.
New models featured improvements
like automatically flipping the bread,
the automatic pop-up, and the automatic pop-up
that toasted both sides of the bread.
Then, in 1928,
after 30 years of toaster innovation,
the bread slicer was invented.
Talk about putting the cart before the horse,
an idiom coined by... a Roman, of course.
[rock music]
Making baked goods wasn't
always a relaxing weekend activity.
Before electric mixers, hand mixing dough and batter
required a Herculean effort.
Innovations began during the Industrial Revolution
with the mechanical mixer, whisk, and egg beater
appearing to keep up with the growing working populations.
In 1908, Herbert Johnson observed a baker
laboring to mix dough with a large iron spoon,
and decided there must be a better way.
He invented a huge
80-quart commercial mixer,
selling it to bakeries and the Navy.
In 1909, company executives
brought a smaller prototype home
for their wives to test out.
One of them exclaimed,
"This is the best kitchen aid I ever used!"
The Kitchenaid brand was born.
A sales team of mostly women
lugged the 65-pound machines door-to-door,
and sales of a smaller version
took off in 1927.
The iconic machine is featured in the Smithsonian
and has become a popular tattoo.
Google it.
Like the understudy in a play,
the blender waits patiently in the cabinet
for its time to shine.
So it's ironic that it was first popularized
by a famous entertainer.
The first patent for a spinning blade
at the bottom of a container was in 1932,
but the blender got its big break in 1936.
Fred Waring was a famous big band leader,
radio personality, and engineering hobbyist
known in the inventor community.
One night after a show,
Waring encountered Fred Osius,
who had snuck backstage to meet
and pitch him his invention, the blender.
Waring saw potential in the drink mixing machine
and invested, selling Waring blenders
at hotels and restaurants
at every stop on tour,
which eventually became more of a household name
than Fred himself.
The blender is popular today for making smoothies
and scaring pets for funny videos/
- Just like the ramen dinner it helps us to make,
the origin story of the microwave
is an instant classic.
After World War II,
the Raytheon company was seeking new uses
for its microwave technology,
which had been used for military radar.
In 1946, Percy Spencer, an engineer,
observed during some microwave tests
that the candy bar in his pocket was melting.
Intrigued, he exposed an egg to microwaves.
It exploded in one of his colleagues' faces.
He then experimented with popcorn kernels,
which nurst all over the lab.
The idea for the microwave oven was born.
The first commercial microwave oven,
produced in 1946,
was almost six feet tall,
weighed over 700 pounds, and cost $5,000,
or $60,000 today.
Not very convenient for bringing to the dorm.
By 1967, Raytheon had brought the size and price down
to $495,
and microwaves exploded in popularity
in the '70s.
Today they're owned by 90% of households.
[exciting music]
Don't you have a new appreciation
for your kitchen? Can you imagine living
without some of these things we take for granted?
You know what?
I'm starving.
Off to my room full of modern miracles!
♪ ♪
[dramatic musical sting]