Today we leave the world of radios and clocks behind and head into the kitchen.
I don’t suppose there’s an accurate count of all the products that have been invented throughout the decades to make our lives easier, but I’m betting it’s in the millions, if not billions. I’m also betting that a good percentage of those were aimed at making a housewife’s, or househusband’s, time in the kitchen more pleasurable, or at least less stressful.
I’ve enjoyed food cooked from one such gadget my whole life. An appliance older than I am and it still works great. Let me introduce you to the Sunbeam Controlled Heat Automatic Frypan, circa 1950s.
Sunbeam started making appliances in 1910. Their first product, according to Wikipedia, was an electric iron called the “Princess.” It came with an option to buy a fireproof metal storage box! Good idea. They’re also famous for a mixer called the Mix Master, which they still make today. But their best product, in my view, is my automatic fry pan.
Precise Temperature Control
The skillet has an indicator light which lights as soon as you turn the unit on and pops off when the pan has reached the right temperature. The chart on the handle gives you the recommended temperature for cooking various dishes. 340 degrees for bacon, 300 degrees for eggs, fried, 320 degrees for eggs, scrambled, 340 degrees for ham, 360 degrees for hamburgers and 380 degrees for pancakes.
That was the setting we used the most, because my mom always cooked our pancakes in our Sunbeam Automatic Frypan, still does in fact. Our whole family got to enjoy them. My mom, dad me and Sam. Sam wasn’t my brother, he was my first pet. A dachshund-terrier mix dog who ALWAYS got the first pancake.
Sam and Me
Here’s how it worked. After Mom got the Sunbeam warmed up and the batter made, she would pour in enough batter for one pancake, her test pancake as she called it, all while Sam stood eagerly at her feet. He knew what was going to happen. Once the pancake was cooked, it went over the side of the counter, but it didn’t hit the floor. Sam would catch it in mid-air and there began a ritual that poor Sam would repeat over and over for most of his 19 years. Because he really wanted to eat that pancake. Really, REALLY wanted to eat it. The only problem was the cake was literally “Hot” off the griddle. Too hot as a matter of fact.
Sam would chew, find the cake was too hot, drop it, wait an interval to let it cool, a whopping one or two seconds, pick up the cake, chew, drop and repeat. This went on until the cake was BARELY cool enough to consume, then GULP, it was gone into Sam’s tummy! He would look up hopefully for more, but seeing that the “test” was successful, it would be our turn to enjoy the rest of the pancakes and Sam would have to wait for a future morning.
Decades have passed since Sam enjoyed his treat, but we always enjoy those memories whenever we pull out the Sunbeam.
The pan had other advantages besides being a great pancake maker. The book that originally came with our pan was long gone, but I was surprised to find dozens of copies of the operating manual on sale online, not only on Ebay, but on Amazon too.
I bought one and found that most of the manual was actually a cookbook, but it did hi-light a few features that made this automatic frypan special. Now, I have looked at this pan my entire life. I love it, like nearly every other piece of tech from the era, but in this case I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then I got my operating manual which contained this flyer and the special style became so obvious I wondered why I never noticed it before.
The pan is square! Not round, like nearly every other pan out there. The ad claims it cooks six strips of bacon at a time, compared to five strips in a round pan, and will hold more of what you want to cook and takes up less counter and storage space. I’m no great chef, but in my experience this claim is true. At least it easily cranked out lots of pancakes.
Yum.
Now back to the cookbook. It claimed to make much more than a classic breakfast favorite. It had recipes for toasting sandwiches, for making pot roast, to even baking a cake! I don’t know about the last one. We never made baked goods in the pan and after sixty years I don’t think it would be a good idea to try it.
I suppose by now you have had one basic question in mind. If the pan can basically double as an oven, how the hell do you keep it clean?
The manual proudly states that the Sunbeam was built with a water sealed heating element which meant it was possible to drunk the pan into the water up to the handle, unplugged of course, for easy cleaning.
Pretty advanced for the 1950s. Pretty cool to still be functional after all these years.
