FIG. 167.—BRAKE, OR KNEADING MACHINE.
In the field of cookery such activity has been displayed that the average kitchen to-day is a veritable museum of modern inventions. Egg beaters, waffle irons, toasters, broilers, baking pans, apple parers, cherry stoners, cheese cutters, butter workers, coffee mills, corn poppers, cream freezers, dish washers, egg boilers, flour sifters, flat irons, knife sharpeners, can openers, lemon squeezers, potato mashers, meat boilers, nutmeg graters, sausage grinders, and frying pans in endless array; all patented and clustered around the modern cooking range as a central figure, and all presenting points of excellence in the matter of economy and convenience, or the betterment of result. The most extensive application of inventive genius is to be found in the large manufacturing bakeries, which make and sell the millions of pounds of crackers and cakes that fill the bins and shelves of the grocery store. In these manufactories the dough is prepared by a mixer, see [Fig. 166], which consists of a spiral working blade revolving in a trough, and capable of handling half a dozen barrels of flour at a time. It is then put through a kneading machine, called a “brake,” shown in [Fig. 167], and is then ready to be converted into crackers or cakes on a great machine 25 feet long, which finishes the crackers and puts them in the pan ready for the oven. This machine, see [Fig. 168], receives the dough at A, where it is coated with flour and flattened into a sheet between rolls. It is then received on a traveling apron B, has the flour brushed off by a rotary brush C, and is then cut into crackers or cakes by vertically reciprocating dies D. At E a series of fingers press the cakes down through the sheet of dough, while the surrounding scraps are raised on a belt F and delivered into a suitable receptacle. The separated cakes at B′ are then delivered into pans at G, the pans being fed on the subjacent belt at G′. Such machines, costing nearly a thousand dollars, produce from forty to sixty barrels of crackers a day, enabling them to be sold at about 5 cents a pound at retail.
FIG. 168.—CRACKER AND CAKE MACHINE.
Dairy Appliances have come in for a large share of attention at the hands of the Nineteenth Century inventor. There are about sixteen million milch cows in the United States, and their contribution to the food stuffs of the day in milk, butter, and cheese is no insignificant factor. There have been over 2,700 patents granted for churns alone, and besides these there are milk coolers, cheese presses, milk skimmers, and even cow milkers. The centrifugal milk skimmer is an interesting type of this class of machine. In the old way the milk was set for the cream to rise, which it did slowly from its lighter specific gravity. In the centrifugal skimmer the milk is continuously poured in through a funnel, and the cream runs out continuously through one spout, and the skimmed milk at the other. An illustrative type of this machine is shown in [Fig. 169]. A steam turbine wheel near the base turns a vertical shaft bearing at its upper end a pan which rotates within the outer case. The milk enters through the faucet at the top, and as the pan within rotates, the heavier milk, by its greater specific gravity, is thrown to the outer part of the pan and passes out through the larger of the two spouts, while the lighter cream is crowded to the center and passes out of the upper spout, which opens into the center of the pan. Patents to Lefeldt & Lentsch, No. 195,515, Sept. 25, 1877, and Houston and Thomson, No. 239,659, April 5, 1881, represent pioneer milk skimmers of this type.
FIG. 169.—CENTRIFUGAL MILK SKIMMER.