Invention of PRESSURE COOKER (1679) (Papin’s “Steam Digester” prefigures the modern cooking vessel)

There is a story that when French scientist and inventor Deins Papin (1647-1712) first demonstrated his wonderfully named ‘digester’ to London’s Royal  Society in 1679, the device exploded.  So another invention swiftly came into being: “Papin’s Safety Valve”, which went on to have other applications.

By 1682, a refined version of the steam digester proved excellent at cooking food and making nutritious bones soft and tasty.  After a demonstration dinner at the Royal Society in that year, one guest, leading horticulturalist John Evelyn noted in his diary that food served from the digester was among the most delicious that I have ever seen or tasted.

Papin was an interesting character of diverse scientific interest.  Trained in medicine as a young man, he had long been interested in food preservation.  His tightly sealed digester vessel showed how atmospheric pressure affected boiling points.  Under high pressure water in the vessel produced steam that cooked food quickly at temperature far higher than those possible in a saucepan.  The cooked food was meltingly soft, its nutrients and flavor were preserved, and the cooker used little fuel.  Papin quickly saw that the impoverished were among those  who would benefit greatly from his device.

Papin went on the experiment which similar principals in various important early steam-engine prototypes that he developed.  Meanwhile his digester also informed the history of the autoclave (whose use include sterilizing medical instruments) and became the modern pressure cooker, which still works very much to his template.

“Mass uptake of Papin’s idea of cooking food under high pressure had to wait until the twentieth century”.