Jewish Invention Myths: The Slow Cooker
One of the ‘jewish invention’ myths associated with jewish entrepreneur and inventor Irving Nachumson – aka Irving Naxon – other than the electronic news ticker (1) and the Lava Lamp (2) – both of which I have debunked as complete nonsense – is the claim that he invented the slow cooker.
Now compared to the electronic news ticker and Lava Lamp there is some evidence to back up this with Michelle Delgado explaining as ‘Smithsonian Magazine’ that:
‘According to Nachumsohn’s daughter, Lenore, her father’s broad range of inventions is evidence of his curiosity and devotion to problem-solving. In their household, the slow cooker was a solution to summer heat, allowing the family to prepare meals without turning on the oven. Nachumsohn applied for the patent on May 21, 1936, and it was granted on January 23, 1940.’ (3)
This is quite true in that Nachumsohn did indeed apply for and get a patent for a slow cooker which appears to be the first – or at least one of the first – which was granted as US patent #2,187,888 in January 1940.
The problem with this claim however is suggested in the detail of how it came about since as Alix Wall writes in the ‘Jewish News of Northern California’:
‘In the Naxon household, it was used a lot in the summer, so the oven wouldn’t overheat the house. Naxon’s mother would throw potatoes in with a bit of water to make “boiked” potatoes, which were a cross between boiled and baked, as well as corn, borscht, stuffed cabbage, and sweet and sour meatballs with grape jelly and chili sauce.’ (5)
The issue you see is that Nachumsohn’s invention was designed merely to slow cook a dish – such as cholent - from before Shabbos to the end of Shabbos which necessarily requires that jews were already doing this long before Nachumson and – as I have pointed out elsewhere – the common Sabbath dish cholent is actually derived from the food culture of the Iberian peninsula and southern France and is not a jewish creation either. (6)
Now the concept of ‘slow cooking’ itself is actually extremely old with it being common in medieval Europe where peasants and travellers often ate what is called ‘perpetual stew’ which is where a pot continually slow cooks whatever is put into it as a stew and then diners take what they want, and it is refilled with ingredients regularly without being removed from the heat source. A good example is the French dish ‘pot-au-feu’ one batch of which was kept continually slow cooking from the fifteenth century to 1940-1942 in Perpignan in southern France. (7)
Further Nachumsohn’s slow cooker was originally called the ‘Naxon Beanery All-Purpose Cooker’ and was designed to simply cook jewish bean dishes like cholent, but in truth all Nachumsohn’s slow cooker actually was was a patented metal beanpot which had long been used in New England (8) and were very similar to the handi of India (9) and the Olla of Spain/Mexico. (10)
The point is simple in that while Nachumsohn may have been the first to actually patent a slow cooker in the United States (I rather suspect he wasn’t even the first to do this either): he merely took a long used and extant non-jewish invention and claimed it as his own work.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-electronic-538
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-lava-lamp
(3) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/brief-history-crock-pot-180973643/
(4) Ibid.
(5) https://jweekly.com/2013/05/24/the-organic-epicure-its-no-crock-s-f-womans-father-was-an-inventor-extraor/
(6) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-cassoulet
(7) https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/06/garden/from-a-pot-au-feu-many-happy-returns.html
(8) https://lorincookslegumes.com/2023/07/03/beanpot/
(9) https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/kitchen/clay-pot-cook-season-clean-basics
(10) https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2022/01/12/got-an-hour-make-these-easy-chipotle-black-beans/