“Carmen, remember these,” a woman called out to her friend as she stopped at a flea-market table this weekend. She picked up a red-handle egg beater and started twirling the little knob, setting the wheel and whisks a-turning.
The memories just poured from her face – a smile, a gleam in her eyes. She responded like many of the folks who stopped and picked up one of the two red-handle egg beaters (one was Bakelite, the other wood). They were remembering their mothers or grandmothers – or themselves as helpers – beating eggs and other ingredients using a tool just like this.
It’s amazing how vintage items can evoke all kinds of memories, good or bad. Lots of people had the same reaction at a flea market a few months ago when they spotted vintage S&H Green Stamps books. They picked up the books, and instantly started talking about licking the stamps for their moms and filling up book after book. Licking so many stamps that their tongues turned green.
There was no licking going on in the egg-beater stories – unless it was the cake batter and folks weren’t telling – but there was a lot of reminiscing:
“Good for your back,” a man said. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
“I remember my mom making cakes with this,” another man said. “She’d make me an egg and milk. She’d put the egg in the milk.” Was this an egg-shake, I wondered.
“I remember my grandma with a beater,” a young man said. “She let me try it.”
“I probably have an egg beater at home,” a woman said. “I have my mother’s rolling pin. I never use it. She’s been gone for 40 years.”
Like her, not many people use rotary or hand-operated egg beaters anymore. They were supplanted years ago by electric mixers, which made preparation for delicious cakes, pies, bread and biscuits much easier. When egg beaters were first invented in the mid-1800s, I’m sure they were a blessing. The first patent for a rotary beater with two whisks, according to my Google research, came around 1870 by a man named Turner Williams of Providence, R.I. He improved on the earlier ones that had only one whisk.
A black man named Willis Johnson received a patent for a commercial mixer. His patent documents of 1884 stated:
“The object of my invention is to provide a machine wherewith eggs, batter, and other similar ingredients used by bakers and confectioners can be beaten or mixed in the most intimate and expeditious manner.”
Here’s a drawing of what it looked like. One site noted that his invention had two chambers, one for mixing batter and the other for beating eggs. I could not find out if it was ever actually produced. (The photo below shows the two egg beaters from the flea market, along with a strainer on the left.)
The first patent for a powered egg beater – which could use mechanical, water or electrical power – was granted on November 17, 1885, to Rufus M. Eastman. By the early 1900s, the first electric mixer was invented by Herbert Johnston and sold by KitchenAid. The familiar glass bottom mixers began appearing in the 1930s.
Here are photos of some early egg beaters.
My auction buddy Janet and her friend Harriet were among the folks reminiscing about egg beaters at the flea market. The two have been friends since college, where they connected around their similar family backgrounds. Felt like they were brought up in the same home, Janet said. It was likely the southernness in their two families – many of us black folks have a down-South connection – that made the commonalities in their lives feel so familiar.
Harriet has an egg beater and a sifter – which she uses for baking cakes. “I don’t care if the package says not to sift, I just do it,” she said.
Janet remembered helping her mother prepare for baking from the time she was a child until she went off to college. “I went away to escape the drudgery,” as she called it.
She wasn’t referring to beating eggs, though. She was taking aim at the flour sifter. A Bromwell’s flour sifter was among the tools on the flea-market table. And like the egg beater, it goes back a long way: California gold-rushers in the mid-1800s took sifters, graters, pans, buckets and popcorn poppers with them, according to the company’s website.
At the flea market, the flour sifter got as much of a workout as the egg beater. It was touched. It was ogled. Its knob was turned.
Janet sifted flour for cakes, pies and biscuits. “When you grew up in a house where your mother baked, that’s what you did,” she said. It was a girl’s chore, she added, not one for the “little princes” boys.
As Janet talked, Harriet offered to bring her back some White Lily Flour when she visited family in North Carolina. Some folks, especially Southerners, believe it’s the best flour for making biscuits and for baking.
Harriett is probably one of the few people who still uses a sifter. Some folks purchase these old kitchen tools for a touch of vintage decoration. One man tried to coax a female friend into buying the sifter by mentioning that he has one sitting on his kitchen counter. The metal Bromwell’s would look good, but imagine finding one of the vintage round wooden sifters with the wire mesh center. Now, that would be awesome.
Do you still use a sifter or egg beater, or remember them from your past? Write and tell me your story.
