One of the things which has changed a lot since I was a child is the equipment used in the kitchen. Here are some things you might remember seeing used in the 50s and 60s.

Every home had a mincer. This was clamped to the work surface or table top and food (mostly meat) was fed in through the top. As the handle was turned minced food came out of the front. My mum normally used it for mincing cold leftover roast meat on a Monday and using the minced meat, in pies, rissoles (who ever uses that word now?) etc.

The picture above shows a mill which also ground food up using a slightly different mechanism.  This lighter weight gadget was for herbs such as parsley and mint.

This is a pressure cooker. My mum cooked all her vegetables and all her soups and stews in hers. They were considered to be very high tech and they cut the cooking time to a third. The vegetables sat above the water and were steamed losing less goodness – although I don’t think anyone thought about that then.

 We all have mixing bowls but back then many of them were this colour and design.

This is how eggs and cream were whisked before electric mixers and food processors.

 Every household had enamel ware in different shapes and sizes. All tarts and pies in our house were baked in these.

   The ubiquitous lemon squeezer! The design has not changed but then they were all glass.  I still have (and use) my mum’s.

 Less common now since tea bags arrived on the scene, but back in the ‘old days’ you couldn’t make tea without using a tea strainer.

 This blue glass and chrome ware was extremely popular. My mum just had a sugar bowl (for best!) and I thought it was beautiful.

 When I was a child every salad had sliced boiled egg on the top. I used to sneak into the pantry and puck the wires to play a tune and if my mum heard she would tell me off thinking I would snap the wires. I now play guitar – perhaps that’s where it all started?

The first picture above shows a tool for rubbing fat into flour for pastry and dough mixtures. You can now buy them again and I wouldn’t be without mine! The middle one I remember seeing but have no clear memory of what it was used for. Cutting potatoes for wiggly chips perhaps? The third one is a pie funnel. You can now by some great ones if different shapes and designs but they used to be just plain white china. My mum didn’t have one but always used a china egg-cup placed upside down in the pie.

This is one of my favourites. I hadn’t seen one for years until recently when they reappeared in the shops. My mum used one for all weighing and measuring. They are brilliant. I now have one and no longer use a kitchen scale. The design hasn’t changed in decades. The only difference is the use of metric instead of imperial measures.