Whisks and Beaters

whisks and beaters are implements used to incorporate air into batters, eggs, and cream. Until the first decades of the nineteenth century, a bundle of twigs, a wooden spoon, or a knife blade was the traditional kitchen tool used for the arduous chore of beating eggs “to a raging foam” or whipping cream to firm peaks. An illustration in the Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1580) depicts a kitchen worker using a large whisk, while the patisserie equipment plate in Diderot and Alembert’s Encyclopedie (1765) resembles a miniature broom. A recipe for a cake baked annually in nineteenth-century American Shaker communities to commemorate the birthday of the sect’s founder, Ann Lee, instructs the cook to “Cut a handful of peach twigs which are filled with sap at this season of the year. Clip the ends and bruise them and beat the cake batter with them. This will impart a delicate peach flavor to the cake.”