An Improved Dessert Maker.

You know how much I love to find recipes in unusual places, don’t you? Well, I have a classic for you today from a patent application made in April 1878 by William H. Silver. It is a recipe for crème patisserie. Note that Mr. Silver was not attempting to claim the recipe itself as his own invention, which he could clearly not have gotten away with, but he used it as an example of what could be made with his new improved dessert maker. I give you an extract from the patent application.

WILLIAM H. SILVER, OF NEW YORK, N. Y., ASSIGNOR TO ANN SILVER, OF
ST. LOUIS, MO.
IMPROVEMENT IN DESSERT-MAKERS.
Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 203,081, dated April 30, 1878; application filed April 1, 1878

"In making various dessert preparations it is necessary not only to measure several different ingredients, but also, usually, to beat the several ingredients, or two or more of the same, together until they assume a given consistency or shade of color, or until they are thoroughly mixed. For example, a recipe for "creams patissiere" is as follows: First, beat four whites of eggs to a very firm body, and then mix with them about one ounce of pulverized sugar; second, take four yolks of eggs and half a gill of milk, and beat well together until thoroughly mixed; third, take about two ounces of pulverized sugar, with a tea-spoonful of potato-starch and two-thirds of a gill of milk, mix the same well, then add the yolks and milk, and beat the whole well together, &c."

[there follows some technical stuff, and then the applicant goes on to describe his invention]

“My dessert-maker is a most efficient eggbeater for all purposes; but its adaptation for mixing two or more ingredients is the basis of my present claims.

I do not claim the glass measuring-jar herein described, in itself considered; nor do I wish to cover by my claims a stationary agitator in combination with a glass receptacle having a contracted waist, this being old in egg-beaters.

The following is what I claim as new and of my own invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, namely:

1. The combination, in a dessert-maker, of a cylindrical, or nearly cylindrical, vertical receptacle, of transparent glass, having measuring-graduations on its outer surface, and a mixing and beating dasher, adapted to reciprocate within said receptacle, substantially as herein shown and described.

2. The combination, in a dessert-maker, of a cylindrical, or nearly cylindrical, vertical receptacle, of transparent glass, having graduations for different substances on its sides, a close cover tightly fitted to the top of said receptacle, and a reciprocating dasher, for mixing two or more ingredients within said receptacle, substantially as herein specified.”

P.S an actual recipe for ‘Improved Tomato Soup’ was in fact patented in 1865: you can find the details HERE.

Quotation for the Day.

A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.
Walter Savage Landor