6 Items You Would Find in a Kitchen 100 Years Ago
Over the past century, the typical home kitchen has undergone a significant transformation, reflecting both social changes and new technology. In the 1920s and ’30s, kitchens were primarily utilitarian spaces with a focus on functionality and easy-to-clean surfaces. Appliances were limited, hand mixers had cranks, and gas ovens, which had replaced wood or coal-burning stoves in most homes, were starting to themselves be replaced by electric ovens.
The post-World War II consumerism of the late 1940s and 1950s brought bigger kitchens for entertaining and more labor-saving appliances, including blenders, mixers, and dishwashers. The kitchen space became more streamlined and functional, and the 1960s and 1970s brought countertop food processors and microwave ovens into the mainstream.
Open-plan kitchens and islands became increasingly popular in home design throughout the 1980s and ’90s, indicative of the kitchen’s role as a hub for family and friends to gather. That trend continued into the 21st century, along with a significant shift toward high-tech kitchens, smart appliances, and a focus on sustainability. Today’s kitchens — reflecting the changing ways we prepare, store, and consume food — look dramatically different than they did a century ago, making many once-popular items obsolete. Here are six things that your grandparents and great-grandparents might have had in their own home kitchens a century ago.
An Icebox
Before the widespread availability of electric refrigerators, iceboxes were used to keep perishable food cool. These wooden or metal boxes had a compartment for ice at the top, and fresh ice was delivered each week by an iceman. The design of the icebox allowed cold air to circulate around the stored items, while a drip pan collected the water as the ice melted. Naturally, iceboxes fell out of fashion as electric fridges went mainstream. In 1927, General Electric introduced the first affordable electric refrigeration, which relied on a refrigerant for cooling rather than ice.
A Butter Churn
Before commercial butter production made it possible to buy butter at the market, churning cream into butter was an activity done at home. The hand-crank butter churn was introduced in the mid-19th century, and it became the most commonly used household butter churn until the 1940s. In the early 20th century, the Dazey Churn & Manufacturing Company began producing glass churns that could make smaller quantities of butter much quicker than the larger, time-intensive churns. Once the butter was churned, it could then be poured or pressed into decorative molds for serving.
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A Hoosier Cabinet
A Hoosier is a freestanding, self-contained kitchen cabinet that was popular in the early 1900s, named after the Hoosier Manufacturing Company that made it. Also known as a “Kitchen Piano” due to its shape, this kitchen necessity offered homemakers ample storage space and an additional work surface. Hoosier cabinets had numerous drawers and shelves for storing cookware and utensils, as well as features such as a flour bin with a built-in sifter, a sugar bin, a spice and condiment rack, a bread bin, a pull-out cutting board, and a cookbook holder. The all-in-one cabinet fell out of favor as kitchen designs began to incorporate built-in cabinets and islands for additional storage and counter space, but they’re still sometimes used for decorative storage.
A Manual Hand Mixer
While the iconic KitchenAid stand mixer was patented more than 100 years ago in 1919, electric hand mixers weren’t commercially available until the 1960s. Before then, beating eggs or mixing other ingredients was done by hand, often with a manual hand mixer (also called a rotary egg beater). First developed in the 1850s, hand mixers had two beaters that rotated when you turned a crank. Though the style and mechanisms evolved over the years, manual hand mixers were still widely used in the 1920s, when only two-thirds of American households had electricity.
A Wall-Mounted Coffee Grinder
Even though ground coffee was available in bags and cans in the 1920s, and instant coffee was gaining popularity, household coffee grinders, such as a wall-mounted coffee grinder (or mill), were still a common kitchen appliance. According to a 1918 New-York Tribune article on the art of making perfect coffee, “The real coffee lover will always have a mill in the kitchen.” The wall-mounted, hand-crank style had a glass container that could hold a pound of coffee beans, and a container with tablespoon markings to catch the ground coffee.
A Recipe Card Box
There was a time when treasured family recipes were written on 3-by-5-inch index cards and stored in a box on the kitchen counter. Before the 1920s, most recipes were passed on by example — young women would learn how to make their grandmother’s pot roast by helping her in the kitchen. As such, handwritten recipes were generally a list of ingredients, often without quantity, and vague directions. As kitchen science developed, magazines began advertising recipe subscriptions delivered as preprinted, perforated cards. Women also started writing their own recipes on blank cards to collect and exchange, and the recipe box proved to be a more decorative and lasting storage solution than a shoebox. Like many vintage kitchen items, this nostalgic throwback still has novelty appeal, but the recipe box has largely been replaced by digital recipes stored on apps and websites.
