The eggbeater bubble

Looking back on this curious moment in American history — the eggbeater bubble — we are faced with a conundrum. From a purely technological point of view, not a single one of the hundreds of patented designs on which so much intelligence was lavished and so many dollars spent was actually an improvement in efficiency or ergonomics over the basic French balloon whisks, which had been in use at least since the eighteenth century, long before the eggbeater boom started (and possibly as long ago as 1570 in Italy, as mentioned above). No top chef now would dream of using a Dover eggbeater. But many of them still have a wide range of old-style balloon whisks (or “French whips”), sometimes using them in tandem with old -fashioned copper bowls . The top quality balloon whisks now come with insulated handles, and the wires are made of stainless steel instead of tin. Other than this, however, these are exactly the same whisks that would have been used by an eighteenth-century confectioner. So what was going on with the American eggbeater boom? The whole thing was a phantom. This wasn’t really about saving labor, because the French whip took less arm action to do the job than most of the new patented designs. It was more about the illusion of saving labor and time. Rather than offering a real cure for weariness, they were placebos.

Bee Wilson, Consider the Fork