Potato and Vegetable Mashers
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From 1884 Mrs. Lincoln
This photo shows a variety of potato and vegetable mashers, also called
beetles.
Potato mashers are often rounded heavy wooden objects with handles and
flat bottoms.
Many of the wooden items were hand made. The more "contemporary" potato
mashers use metal.
These implements were designed to press or mash foods but can be used
in multiple other ways as evidenced in 1884
Mrs. Lincoln. In this book (p. 248) the potato masher (or pestle)
is to be used to press finely chopped meat tightly into cloth bags, much
as a sausage stuffer is used to press chopped/ground meat into casings.
This genre of equipment - food mashers/beetles - are the oldest kitchen
utensil still being used today. The most popular use of them is for mashing
potatoes
and for pounding meat to tenderize.
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