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Cookie Cutters

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

After cookie dough is rolled out, cookie cutters sometimes are used to shape the dough before baking. At their simplest, cookies cutters are round and indistinguishable from biscuit cutters. At their fanciest, they cut an outline and impress a design on the top, for example, leaf-shaped cutters with veins. Tin cutters, which, according to folklore were fashioned from scraps by traveling tinkers, have been made since the 1840s; they may have been made earlier in Pennsylvania by European immigrants with a cookie-shaping heritage. The first U.S. patent for a cake cutter (cookies were called “cakes” in the 1800s) was issued in 1857. Early cookie cutters usually were made of tin, or occasionally of wrought iron or copper. They were one-of-a-kind creations until about 1870, when mass-produced sets were made in the United States or imported, particularly from Germany. Housewives often kept a dozen or more strung on a cord, ready for use.

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