Juicers, reamers, pitters and stoners
Drinking juices seems pretty basic, especially if you buy them in paper cartons or plastic bottles.
Juicing, meaning extracting juices (and not taking performance-enhancing drugs), seems to date from the Dead Sea Scrolls way back in 150 BC, allegedly when an Israeli desert tribe known as the Essenes mashed figs and pomegranates to consume and produce “profound strength and subtle form.”
Limes, lemons, oranges and pomegranates have been made into beverages for centuries. People living on remote islands made drinks from tropical fruits. Peru natives smashed passion fruit and combined it with water.
The first lemon squeezer apparently turned up in Turkey during the early 18th century, even though lemons weren’t native there. In the United States, more than 200 patents for lemon squeezers were registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office between 1880 and 1910.
Lewis P. Chichester got the first patent on July 3, 1860 for a cast iron squeezer. By the late 1800s John White and other inventors filed more applications trying to improve on Chichester’s model. Reamers are coming back to save electricity and get back to basics.
Credited with introducing modern juicing in his 1936 book Raw Vegetable Juices, Walker claimed, as do some health advocates now, that his juicers could extract more enzymes, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and minerals than one can consume by eating the fresh fruit or vegetable. He lived what he preached and lasted to a ripe and juicy age of 99 years.
Reamers were developed 200 years ago in Europe when it was thought that some citrus juices could cure scurvy. China producers such as Meissen, Royal Rudolstadt, Bayreuth and Limoges made reamers that were used in elegant homes and dining rooms in Europe.
In the United States, the first hand-held reamer was patented in about 1867, followed by a small one-piece reamer with a small dish or saucer and a cone that set on a receptacle glass. In the 1880s a glass rim was added to the bottom of the saucer to keep the reamer on the glass the juice was supposed to drain into.
Wooden reamers featured a tapered conical end with tapered troughs that run the length of the pointy end.
In 1907 the California Fruit Growers Exchange co-operative formed and used the name Sunkist to entice east coasters to buy California citrus. Sunkist launched a massive “Drink an Orange” campaign in 1916 that featured reamers. Several pottery companies made reamers for Sunkist until the early 1960s in various colors and were copied and “improved” by the likes of Anchor Hocking and Cambridge.
The biggest steps forward in juicer creativity were made by Dr. Norman Walker, an English researcher and advocate of consuming fresh juices, who developed a line of Norwalk Juicers around 1930.
Juicers are not blenders. Juicers usually separate pulp and juice, while blenders grind fruits or vegetables with pulp mixed in, occasionally needing to be strained or removed.
There is definitely a return to the basics of juicing with “new” discovery that juicing vegetables, seeds and fruits is more nutritious than eating them.