"He [Papin] doth not think... that any thing better can be made for such things, as must be stew'd...."
Denis Papin, Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775)
There is a story that when French scientist and inventor Denis Papin (1647-1712) first demonstrated his wonderfully named "digester" to London's Royal Society in 1679, the device exploded. So another invention swiftly came into being: Papin's safety valve, which went on to have other applications.
By 1682, a refined version of the steam digester proved excellent at cooking food and making nutritious bones soft and tasty. After a demonstration dinner at the Royal Society in that year, one guest, leading horticulturalist John Evelyn, noted in his diary that food served up from the digester was among "the most delicious that I have ever seen or tasted."
Papin was an interesting character of diverse scientific interests. Trained in medicine as a young man, he had long been interested in food preservation. His tightly sealed digester vessel showed how atmospheric pressure affected boiling points. Under high pressure, water in the vessel produced steam that cooked food quickly at temperatures far higher than those possible in a saucepan. The cooked food was meltingly soft, its nutrients and flavor were preserved, and the cooker used little fuel. Papin quickly saw that the impoverished were among those who would benefit greatly from his device.
Papin went on to experiment with similar principles in various important early steam-engine prototypes that he developed. Meanwhile his digester also informed the history of the autoclave (whose uses include sterilizing medical instruments) and became the modern pressure cooker, which still works very much to his template.
