Tag Archives: 1884

Hunter Sifter Cook Book

Hunter Sifter Cook Book 1884Although I’m off today, I worked on some auction listings; including one for the Hunter Sifter Cook Book.
The Hunter Sifter Cook Book contains advertisments for a number of Cincinnati businesses.
Several Hunter Sifter M-f-g Co. products are advertised: the Sifter, Cyclone Beater, and Safety Hollow Ware.
Naturally, I found the Hunter Sifter Co. products: Hunter Sifter, Cyclone Egg Beater and Safety Hollow Ware in various forms on the cook book’s recommended list of Kitchen Utensils. And commonplace items: kitchen table and chairs, can opener, nutmeg grater, potato slicer, waffle iron. Other items listed, puzzled me:

  • candlesticks
  • ash bucket
  • coal hod
  • hammer
  • hatchet
  • 3 iron kettles
  • lantern
  • match box
  • 2 iron spoons
  • meat saw
  • mustard pot
  • rubber window cleaner
  • tin pails
  • wirescreens (assorted sizes)
  • sugar box
  • salt box
  • stepladder
  • tin cake box
  • wash keeler
  • wooden buckets

After further consideration, the items made sense.
A meat saw cuts up a carcass. A pail or bucket carries water or milk from its source to the kitchen. But for a “sugar box,” sugar hardens into a rock in the moist environment of a kitchen, or worse, becomes home, sweet home to a family of worms. Stainless steel and plastic had not yet been invented, so wooden, iron, and steel implements held, chopped, mixed, heated, transported, and safeguarded ingredients. Mousetrap made the list.



hunter sifter cyclone egg beater

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Filed under 19th Century, Cookware & Appliance, Regional