Pressure cooker: the ascent "Papen boilers"

People have long sought to find faster ways to cook food. But it was hindered by the law of physics: water boils at 100 ° C. And that’s it. And the speed of cooking depends only on temperature. According to the laws of physics, the temperature of water boiling on the stove in the pot is 100 ° C. And even the strongest fire won’t make it go any faster, it can only make the water boil a little bit closer. And then we must be patient and wait: the meat is boiled for an hour and a half or more, beets – almost the same, potatoes – 20-25 minutes, rice – 15-20 minutes, and so on. All this time you have to stay in the kitchen and watch the stove without taking your eyes off it for too long.

So, the search for a way to speed up cooking should have been sought in increasing the boiling temperature.

It was physics that helped me cook quickly

Finally, such a way was found. And it wasn’t the microwave you think it is. It appeared relatively recently. The invention in question dates back to 1679. And did it a man, also very concerned about the slowness of cooking. It was the French physicist Denis Papin.

Couldn’t do without physics. By that time, the naturalists had already figured out that the boiling point of a liquid depended on atmospheric pressure. For example, when it is raised by only 10 mm the boiling temperature of water increases by 0,3 degree. So when the weather is clear and sunny, when the pressure is higher, your potatoes will boil faster. How tangible it was is another question.

So to control the pressure within more tangible limits, Denis Papin created a hermetically sealed vessel in which, when heated, the pressure rose and hence the boiling point. And since the boiling point is higher, it means that cooking goes faster.

“Papen’s boiling pot retains vitamins

The invented device was called “Papin’s Digester”, which translates as “Papin’s Digester”. Then we found out that this miracle cooker not only speeds up cooking, but also better preserves nutrients and vitamins although we learned about vitamins later . The thing is that when you cook in a regular pot, oxygen oxidizes the nutrients and vitamins, changing the taste and depriving the food of a lot of usefulness. But in a sealed vessel, there is very little oxygen, and it can’t cause noticeable oxidation.

You would argue that the vitamins in an airtight pressure vessel could be damaged by the higher temperature. But it’s not so much the temperature that destroys vitamins but the duration of heating and the presence of oxygen.

When they later learned to measure the vitamin content of foods, laboratory studies showed: yes, cooking in an airtight pressure vessel preserves vitamins much better.

The pressure cooker came to a curious part of humanity

As the centuries passed, and though the “boiling pot of Papen” was not a great success, it had its adherents among those who like technical improvements in everyday life.

For a long time, it was just a thick-walled pot with a tightly screwed lid that threatened to break off under high pressure and fly away, causing destruction along the way.

But even when boiling was successfully completed, you had to wait a long time for the pressure to build up, or you couldn’t open the lid. That’s the dialectic: faster cooking means more time waiting for results. Nothing is given for nothing. But the time spent at the stove was shortened, and this was a major achievement.

I happened to see a set of such vacuum-tight saucepans in an English commercial catalog of 1912, where this design was advertised as a novelty and was called “Vacuum Self Cooker”. The accompanying advertisement assured that the dishes would be ready within two hours. The lion’s share of that time was spent on cooling down and releasing pressure before the pot could be opened.

Those pressure cookers had no outlet valves, fuses, or regulators. But the curious part of mankind continued to use this awkward “brew” making one small improvement after another. Until it morphed into what we now call a pressure cooker.

Interest in the half-forgotten pressure cooker was revived in the 1920s. Germany first adapted this cauldron for fast cooking in restaurants. A little later, the Americans began mass-producing pressure cookers for the home.

The pressure cooker of our day

Modern pressure cookers do not present such problems as their ancient prototypes. All pressure cookers have a pressure release valve to keep pressure at the right level. At the end of cooking, you can release pressure relatively quickly to a level that allows you to open the lid.

The construction of a modern pressure cooker allows slow or rapid pressure reduction decompression with the help of a regulator. Slow pressure reduction is recommended for broths, baked goods with milk, eggs, dried vegetables, puddings and muffins with yeast.

A quick decompression is used for meat stews, vegetable and fish dishes.

Quality pressure cookers come with several safety features: a safety valve and valve system around the lid, a lid locking and unlocking system. No nasty surprises.

In America pressure cookers became quite widespread in 70-80s of the 20th century. They were supplied by defense companies, sometimes sold products of the so-called People’s Democracies.

The Americans were eagerly buying pressure cookers. Recently, with the advent of many new appliances for cooking food, interest in pressure cookers has declined.

And in vain: today’s pressure cookers are little masterpieces. Their bodies are of polished stainless steel, and a thick layered bottom of stainless steel and more thermally conductive aluminum has heat-accumulating properties.

All the heat from the burner goes to speed cooking. Cooking is monitored by temperature sensors, sometimes you can see a whole push-button control panel on a massive handle.

Pressure cookers can compete with microwave ovens in cooking speed, and some foods they cook even faster.

Cooked food tastes completely different than the microwave. It’s worth having both in your home to have a wide variety of fast-cooking meals.