Kitchenware

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This is a database of kitchenware, researched to give you the pros and cons of each item.

Contents hide

1 Search the kitchenware database
2 The evolution of kitchenware

Search the kitchenware database

If you can’t figure out how we’ve filed something by browsing the categories, just type it in here and hit search.

The evolution of kitchenware

In looking at kitchenware, it’s interesting to see what has come and gone over the centuries and millennia. Butter churns, grape scissors and frying pans with legs have come and gone; corkscrews and can openers have appeared on the scene and are now considered basic must-haves.

The 1800s approaching the 1900s were a time of great innovation in culinary tools, but that came thudding to a halt with the start of World War One, with metals everywhere being diverted to the war effort. Innovation picked up again afterwards, but then ceased again during the period of World War Two. ^[1] “It is important to mention that all metals were in short supply between 1914 and 1918, during the First World War, therefore very few new house wares were developed at this time.” — Kay, Emma. Vintage Kitchenalia. Gloucestershire, England: Amberley Publishing. 2017. Google Ebook edition.

With all these items, it can sometimes be challenging to know exactly how to categorize something. Is a chinois, with its pestle, closer to a mortar and pestle, or to a strainer? What would you file microwave food cover under?

Emma Kay, author of “Vintage Kitchenalia”, wrote about the dilemma:

“One of the hardest things about writing this book was how to classify the objects. For instance, should an ice-cream scoop be included in dairy or utensils, and should cake and biscuit moulds go into bakery or the specific chapter on moulds?”^[2]Ibid.

AGA Stoves

AGAs are always-on stoves and ovens. An AGA cooks food by using the type of radiant-heat that was used throughout most of history for cooking, before modern direct heat burners came along. Some models of the stove can also provide hot water and heat for...

Alambic Stills

Alambic stills make alcohol in one distinct batch at a time. Fans say they are capable of brewing alcoholic beverages with complexity and character that other types of stills can't match.

Bags

Bags are a workhorse in the food world. Yet despite their important role they are taken for granted and never given a second thought. They are used for every stage of food consumption from growing to cooking to serving.

Baskets

Baskets have been an important part of food gathering, transportation and storage since time immemorial.

Batterie de Cuisine

The expression, 'batterie de cuisine', means literally 'your kitchen artillery.' Its actual usage is a bit less dramatic, though: it is taken to mean the collection of essential tools that you need in your kitchen to be an efficient and good cook in the...

Biscuit Brake

A biscuit brake is a machine to beat air into an unleavened dough in order to make raised biscuits. Before biscuit brakes, the work used to be done laboriously by hand.

Boards

Boards in cooking can be used for preparation, cooking, presentation, and serving. They are traditionally made of wood but depending on the purpose, modern ones may be made of glass, stone, marble, or plastic.

Bowls

Bowls are often suggested as priority candidates for a place on the list of the earliest cooking tools devised by man. The first bowls may have been gourds, or indentations in rocks or logs.

Branding Iron

Branding irons for home use in cooking are miniature branding irons for burning brand marks into food that is being grilled.

Bread Bins

A bread bin (aka bread box) is a solid container in which fresh bread is stored at room temperature. They come in many different shapes, sizes and designs. Some people think they are old-fashioned; many people still swear by them.

Brushes

Studio artists have their brushes, but then so, too, do the kitchen artists known as cooks. Brushes in the kitchen are indispensable for everything from cleaning of both dishes and produce, and for actual food preparation.

Cans

Cans (aka tins) are metal containers (usually cylindrical but not necessarily) in which food or drink is hermetically sealed for storage over long periods of time. They come in different sizes; sometimes the size designations are used as units of measurement...

Chopsticks

Chopsticks are Asian eating utensils, designed for eating food that has already been cut by a cook into bite-size pieces. Chinese ones are square sticks, with blunt tips. Japanese ones are slightly shorter, rounded, and with pointy tips.

Cloths

From growing our food to storing it to cooking it to keeping our food preparation work areas sanitary, cloths have always played and continue to play a vital role in keeping us fed.

Coffee Makers

Coffee makers are tools used to make coffee as a hot beverage. They can be manual or electric, counter top or stove top. One of the most important attributes that most people look for in a coffee maker is whether they can operate it easily first thing...

Contact Paper

Contact paper is water repellent, self-adhesive paper that comes on rolls for covering kitchen surfaces with. There are zillions of patterns available. Fans inspire each other to find uses for contact paper throughout the house.

Cookware

Cookware is anything you cook in, whether in the oven, on top of the stove, over a campfire or in a microwave. At a minimum, such items need to be heat resistant but other requirements also come into play based on the medium of heat.

Corks

A cork is a bottle stopper, generally used for wine bottles to stop the wine in them from oxidizing.

Corkscrews

A corkscrew is a device used to open bottles sealed with corks by extracting the corks from them. They are primarily now used on wine bottles.

Cutters

Cutters have evolved as kitchen tools to provide greater efficiency than knives always can. Many are designed for special purposes, which can be speed, decoration, or accuracy.

Dishwashers

Dishwashers are perhaps one of the most important labour saving devices in the kitchen. Most people would give up many other things in their home before they'd give up their dishwasher.

Egg Cups

Egg cups are small dishes used to serve boiled eggs in. They came into their own under the Victorians. Highly-decorative porcelain ones appeared in sets.

Egg Timers

An egg timer is a simple timing device designed to measure cooking times for making boiled chicken eggs. It also can be used for cooking other items with short cooking times.

Esky

An Esky is a Australian portable insulated food cooler with a hinged lid or removable lid, depending on model and vintage of the model; it is a common item in many Australian homes.

Fat Separators

A fat separator is a device which uses gravity and time to separate fat from meat juices.

Food presses

Food presses are devices which transform food in some way. They have many applications in the culinary world.

Forks

Forks are used for every stage of food consumption: from growing the food, to food preparation, to serving, and finally to eating. Their use is ubiquitous now, and in the West, we take them for granted.

French Butter Crock

A French butter crock is a two-piece container designed to keeping butter fresher at room temperature. It consists of one piece which holds the butter, and another piece which holds tap water.

Funnels

Funnels are tools used to transfer food items into containers with narrow tops, usually for storage. The purpose of the funnel is to minimize spillage and wastage during transfer of the food item.

Griddles

Griddles are flat surfaces with no sides which are heated for cooking food items on. The absence of sides makes it easier to flip items being cooked on them. There are different models for commercial and domestic use.

Kitchen String

Kitchen string can be used for many purposes including holding food items together during cooking. For this reason, it's always made of natural material, not synthetic, so that it won't melt into the food during cooking.

Kitchen Tongs

Kitchen tongs are devices used to picking up or manipulating food or food related objects. They can provide greater precision than other tools such as forks or spooks, and act as an extension of your hand.

Knives

A knife is an implement for cutting, chopping, scraping, spreading and smoothing. It is used both in the kitchen and at the table. A somewhat macabre cook's superstition holds that a knife is never truly yours until it has tasted your blood.

Mats

Mats have been used throughout human history in every phase of food preparation, from growing, gathering, sieving, storage, preparation, cooking, serving, and cleanup. There are specialized mats for each phase; very few if any are interchangeable.

Measuring Tools

Measuring tools are devices used in cooking to take the amount of an ingredient needed in preparing or assembling a dish. Measuring is usually done in weight or volume, but it may also be done by length in a few instances.

Meat Cooking Tools

A variety of tools are used to cook meat. Some are relatively new; others have been with us since the dawn of fire. The tools are used to prepare, cook, serve and even decorate meat.

Microwave Food Covers

A microwave food cover is a re-usable device used to cover dishes of food being heated or cooked in a microwave oven

Microwave Ovens

A microwave oven is an electric oven that cooks food items through the use of radio waves.

Milk Cellar

A milk cellar was a cool cellar dedicated to storing dairy products. Ideally, the temperature of a milk cellar would be around 14 C (58 F).

Mills

In a kitchen, small mills are tools used for grinding, crushing, powdering or pulverizing. Commercially, mills are used for processing foods on a larger scale.

Mixers

A kitchen mixer is a tool or appliance that partially or completely automates the task of mixing.

Moulds

A mould is an item in which a food dish is cooked or prepared, and then turned out of for serving. Its function is to both hold the food item in question together, and to form it into a pleasing or useful shape for presentation.

Oxo Good Grips

Oxo Good Grips® are a line of kitchenware that aims to rethink kitchen tools to make them more user-friendly and pleasant to use. It has no relation to the Oxo® company in England.

Pans

The role of cooking pans is to contain food over heat, and deliver heat from the outside heat source — burner or oven — to the food inside. In general, pans are used for solid ingredients.

Paraffin

Paraffin wax is a white wax with no smell or taste. It is not a true wax. Food-wise, it is used for a variety of applications such as waxed paper, coating fruit or root veg to extend storage life, adding a sheen to chocolate coatings, and making candy ...

Pots

A pot is a vessel that you put stuff in for the purpose of cooking, storing or preserving. In North American culinary usage, generally only the cooking sense is used. In the UK, the additional storage and preserving sense of the word is used as well...

Rolling Pins

Rolling pins are long cylinders used to press out dough evenly and smoothly. They can be made out of a variety of materials, and have handles at the ends, or not.

Salamanders

Salamanders are kitchen devices used for broiling, browning, caramelizing, glazing, grilling and toasting. They are generally used to put finishing touches on food, rather than cook them. There are two forms of salamanders. One is hand-held; the other...

Salt Cellar

Salt cellars are small vessels designed to hold salt for serving at the table. They can be made of many different materials. The salt is obtained out of the salt cellar via the use of a small spoon designed for the purpose, or informally, by hand with...

Salt Pigs

Salt pigs are large-mouth vessels for storing salt in. They are usually made of ceramic. They provide storage which keeps salt dry and dust free, while allowing a cook quick and easy access to the salt by hand.

Spatulas

Every kitchen is full of spatulas, yet the word means different things to different cooks. To some, a spatula is a bowl scraper, to others, it is an implement for flipping eggs.

Spoons

Spoons have likely been part of a cook's arsenal since mankind first learned how to carve. The first spoons would have been made of bone or wood, with millennia passing before spoons made of metals became possible. Now, no kitchen is complete without ...

Steamers

A steamer, in broad terms, is a device that holds food above boiling water so that it cooks by steaming, not by boiling.

Strainers and Sieves

Strainers are devices for getting solids out of liquid. Sieves are devices for separating differently sized solid particles from one another. The two terms are often used interchangeably.

Tea Trappings

Tea trappings, in the strictest sense of the term, are devices literally used to "trap" loose tea leaves. In the broader sense of the term, however, it means any of the accoutrements involved in the preparation, presentation, serving, and enjoyment of...

References
↑1	“It is important to mention that all metals were in short supply between 1914 and 1918, during the First World War, therefore very few new house wares were developed at this time.” — Kay, Emma. Vintage Kitchenalia. Gloucestershire, England: Amberley Publishing. 2017. Google Ebook edition.
↑2	Ibid.