How the revolutionary salad spinner sent the culinary world into a whirl.
Saddened by the sight of limp, soggy salad, a French inventor devised a device that sent cooks into a spin, writes Chris Pearson.
French serial inventor Jean Mantelet (pictured) lived and breathed kitchen gadgets. For his own company Moulinex, he developed devices for mashing, grating, grinding, chopping and slicing. In 1971, he added spinning to the list. As French households embraced salads, he devised a fresh twist on their preparation, the salad dryer (later dubbed the salad spinner). Water, he reasoned, was the enemy of leaves, making them go limp and preventing oil-based dressings from sticking to them. Using centrifugal force, his device spun rinsed greens in a colander so the water flew out the sides, collected in an outer plastic bowl and fell into the base. (He wasn’t strictly the first to use that principle. In the 19th century, zealous salad eaters in Sweden reportedly twirled baskets of greens around their heads to dry them.)
Ooh, la, la, said cooks around France – no more wasted paper towels or jiggling a colander and hoping for the best. Soon after, compatriot Gilberte Fouineteau came up with his own spin: he dispensed with Mantelet’s central column, which then allowed the user to remove the basket, as in the version we know today.
Meanwhile, in 1973, Mantelet launched his Household Drying
Machine in the US, but its reception was decidedly limp and critics consigned it to back-of-the-cupboard status. By the late ’70s, however, as the trend for healthy eating gathered momentum, Mantelet’s marvel found its way back to the benchtop.
Recently, Swiss kitchenware brand Zyliss has arguably made the spinner its own. In 2004, it patented a system where the pull-string operation included a brake. The resulting Easy Spin was awarded a Red Dot design award in 2004. And, in 2007, while Chef’n pre-empted it in introducing a lever to turn the basket, Zyliss incorporated the system on the Smart Touch the following year and won another Red Dot for its efforts.
In 2014, Zyliss upped the ante with its AquaVent system. “Our design team came up with the idea of increasing the surface area of the basket to increase draining efficiency,” says Grant Race director of marketing, DKB Household UK (aka Zyliss HQ). But there’s more. The AquaVent system’s wavy basket and top and bottom vents also improve drainage and airflow. In 2016, it scored Zyliss another coveted Red Dot.
WHAT IT MEANS TO US
Australians love their salads and their spinners. Since Zyliss launched its version here in 1978, this market has grown for them to become second only to the US – and that’s not per capita, but in total units sold. “Zyliss has in excess of 50 per cent of the Australian market,” says Michael Anstee, marketing manager, lifestyle & household, DKSH Australia, although he’s keeping the lid on actual numbers (“It is difficult to quantify exactly as there are a number of brand-less products on the market.”). And prepackaged leaves pose little threat, adds Race. “We have not seen a drop in demand. Bagged salad is perhaps one of the highest waste items in terms of packaging, and a lot of customers still wash their prewashed bagged produce in a spinner. Try it and you will be surprised by the results.”
Our advice? Give it a whirl.