Overview

A pressure cooker is a vessel that uses steam under high pressure for cooking food. It offers a number of benefits, including fast, often low-fat cooking that preserves the minerals—and even the coloration—of fruits, vegetables, and meats. For Americans born in the twentieth century, pressure cookers were a familiar part of home life, so much so that they had come to seem positively old-fashioned by the 1990s, when they began making a comeback among health-conscious consumers. In fact the genesis of the pressure cooker dates back to a 1679 invention by French physicist Denis Papin (1647-1712), though it would be many centuries before a modified version of his "steam digester" would be adapted for household use.

Background

Many of the features associated with the modern kitchen and dining room are more recent in origin than most...