CHAPTER XXV
THE KITCHEN ROTARY CLUB
Are you a culinary rotarian? Or do you still “beat it” by hand?
The Kitchen Rotary Club is becoming a real factor in culinary economics! By means of rotary motion the mixer, the beater, the combination of these two have come to relieve the back, arm and hand and where electrically driven cause no waste of time!
ELECTRIC ROTARIES
To begin with, these fairy-like machines are somewhat like and unlike patent medicine advertisements--alike because they claim to do many things and unlike because they can and do fulfill their claims!
For example, they beat eggs, mix bread dough, mayonnaise; stir cake batter, frostings, dressings; whip cream; mash potatoes; grind nuts, spices and meat; drive (some) ice-cream freezers; turn the food chopper; have grinding and buffing wheels for sharpening cutlery and polishing silver. In fact, they are companions not idly to be cast aside.
HOUSEWIVES BAD MIXERS
This will especially appeal to the housewife mayonnaisly--because many a good mixture has been wasted by inefficient mixings by the mixer being called away suddenly, etc. Then, too, many a mayonnaise is never born at all because the housewife or the cook “hasn’t the time to-day.” Where the mixer is electrically driven, time is added unto the menage and while the mayonnaise is forming the cook is _per_forming elsewhere.
Egg beating, cream whipping, batter beating, all these take time. Now with the electric machine the home can revel in soufflés and cake. It can buy coffee in the bean and grind it with no effort--here is a real epicurean saving. For coffee in the bean and grinding it at home saves the volatile essences of the coffee which gives to perfect coffee the added aroma and full flavor. These machines grind cutlery and not “exceedingly slow” and so can add finesse to a slice of meat!
As with the mayonnaise mixing, these utilitarian investments take the guess work out of cake, meringues, batters. Improper mixing is an immorality not easily cleansed from kitchens. Yet these instruments with perfection of mechanical agitation do the mixing with assurance and become real vice chasers. Imagine! (all things being right)--you can be sure that success will come to your cakes, sauces, breads, rolls, pies, cookies, doughnuts, cheese dishes, puddings, sauces--Remember that lumpy cream sauce? Well no more of that! Your sauces and your mashed vegetables will be lumpless!
Removing doubt, removes nerve strain in a kitchen--and maybe the cook without nerve strain will be affable and a comforting dweller in your halls!
THE NEW MACHINES
Among the best machines is one so made as to effectively chop food and meat, grind coffee, slice vegetables and fruit, etc., etc.; has with its attachments a hot-water and ice container to be used as a “bath,” if stirring must needs be done in a cold or hot medium; soup strainer and colander connection; ice-cream freezer attachment; a meat slicer (a great comfort and saving of meat). This motor has three speeds.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Troy Metal Products Co._
A MEMBER OF THE KITCHEN ROTARY CLUB AT WORK ON CAKE-MIXING.]
You may have never felt the need of these types of workers, but then you never knew the use of the radiogram until you used it!
Don’t you hate to strain and _persuade_ large quantities?
The strain is gone from straining large quantities now. This is gently done by the coaxing electric strainer and colander device.
One “mixer” is also accompanied by a cabinet if desired. It is finished in white and is made especially for this device and houses comfortably all its attachments. It has an enameled metal top and does not add much to the total cost of machine.
Another power unit advertises two speeds and has all the above attachments. It comes with a metal table with a shelf (open), on which all the work can be done with comfort.
SMALLER CRAFT
If you don’t want a machine that can do so much, there is one on the market electrically driven, which beats eggs, mixes mayonnaise, angel cake and light batter, mashes potatoes and fluffs them if mixed with butter and cream, mixes custard, soufflés, etc.
It has a small ¹⁄₂ H. P. motor of fine construction designed for 110 voltage. It is necessary in this case to state whether your current is direct or alternating (DC or AC). This motor can run on either direct or alternating if the speed control device is not to be used. But the speed control in this instrument is its crowning glory. That is, you can mix rapidly or slowly, a performance the older type of mixers small or large could not do. It was racing speed or nothing. All cooks know that some things take rapid beating or stirring, some other things slower agitation. The cook or housewife can in the course of her experience with these new comers into our kitchens find new uses continually for them.
For example, this small motor has a speed regulator which ranges from 4800 to 8000 revolutions per minute. This motor takes from 25 watts (extra load) to 60 watts (heavy load).
It is well to have a detachable motor as in this one, for when cleaning is necessary the motor remains--due to its hydrophobiac (fear of water) elements--unharmed!
The beater itself here is the ancient and honorable Dover type, so you see it is not so foreign to your ken.
TIME AND THE MIXER
1000 revolutions is all you can effect in a minute, no matter how “Red” you may be. This machine turns 2000 revolutions, outrushing the Russians and all Central Europe!
SOME EVOLUTIONS
In from one to five and ten minutes can eggs, frostings, and mayonnaise be accomplished!
Full speed for heavy mixtures, half speed for lighter, a gram of cream can be had in less than five minutes.
A gallon of oil in relation to a mayonnaise dressing took but ten minutes to be used up.
Now can _you_ beat it? Hasn’t this phrase lost its slangy significance?
This little angel weighs but 2³⁄₄ pounds, and its lightness is one of its charms.
REQUIREMENTS
All these machines should be easily attached to wall or lighting sockets or outlets. (Electric).
They must be easily cleaned.
The motor must be protected from you and food stuffs and you must be protected from it.
All attachments must attach easily. When easily is used it is meant to the limit of ease. All parts must fit, so that the doing of a new operation is not accompanied with dread. It must be a pleasure to depart from coffee grinding to turning the ice-cream pail and polishing silver.
Now, kitchening is no endurance test. The fatigue is eliminated. Your days may not be so “stirring” but at the end of them you will feel like the theatre and what not.
The hand-turned cake and bread mixers are better than mixing by hand and spoon--but if possible, the electrically driven mixers which come in many styles and prices will give you more than comfort and will outlast many a cook.
The hand-turned stoners, buffers, grinders, etc., are very efficient but not quite the joy an electrically driven unit may be in an electrically conducted ménage.
These machines are Utopian agitators! Agitating for food and helping the Kitchen Workers of the World.
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