OXO, Cuisinart, and Julia Child: The Secret (Accessible) History Behind Your Kitchen

25:08General Mills was vaguely aware of this issue. They had received letters from blind homemakers, and some of their staff had connections to the blind community in Minneapolis, where they were based. But it took one blind woman in particular to really get them to do something. Her name was Margaret Mumford-Neal, and she was local to Minneapolis. she became blind later in life. It was the result of like a botched glaucoma operation. And she came home from the hospital. And, you know, her her kitchen was fully stocked. But she couldn't she couldn't read the ingredients. She couldn't read Braille. And so she contacted General Mills to see if they could do anything.

25:53General Mills had a sense of corporate responsibility. This apparently was a trend in large companies at the time. And so they were interested in this opportunity as a way to help people and be a good citizen. But then, of course, General Mills was also eager to, you know, expand its business and recognize blind homemakers as consumers, which was important both from General Mills' perspective, but also ends up being really important in terms of these blind homemakers' perspective as well, because they often sort of felt left out of consumer culture. So what General Mills did is make a 10-inch record set called Directions for Using Betty Crocker Mixes.

26:29There were three records, each labeled in braille and large type. One was for Betty's Bisquick mixes, one for her cakes and frostings, and one for miscellaneous Betty goodness. Betty Crocker's good and easy cookbook. Banana cream, pineapple cream, and coconut cream pudding may be made from the vanilla mix by adding sliced bananas, drained crushed pineapple, or shredded coconut. All of these records were the result of collaborations with local organizations. Blind cooks participated and offered advice. They tested the recipes and they said what else needed to be added to make them useful for blind cooks.

27:07A lot of the recipes ended up instructing users to rely on other senses, right, besides sight, in order to test doneness or to just, you know, test that the consistency was correct. And so the date bar recipe, users were advised to make sure, like, it felt crumbly with their fingers. The biscuits and brownies were supposed to feel crusty when they were done, and blind cooks were encouraged to listen for when a cake stopped whispering to know that it was ready to take out of the oven. These records were free, basically. You just had to pay 10 cents for the shipping. And the blind community of Betty Crocker fans were super excited, and they let General Mills know.

27:45Oh, it was overwhelming. Just all sorts of users wrote in very, very enthusiastically. And so, you know, a lot of it was just a lot of sort of appreciation and excitement and demand for more. So General Mills got to work and put out a new three-disc set called Tips and Talking Recipes. Betty was still the narrator, but these recipes went beyond her mixes. In the second round of records, General Mills included recipes for like scalloped potatoes and, you know, sort of a really wide variety of foods. Ham and lima. One package, frozen baby lima beans. One center-cut slice, ham. One cup grated American cheese.

28:33Cook lima beans until tender. Meanwhile, place ham in shallow pan. Sprinkle with cheese. Arrange lima beans over ham and broil until cheese melts and bubbles. Serve immediately. Make four to six servings. Not necessarily appetizing to modern ears, but hey. Despite what sounds pretty gross to us today, that record set was so successful that they kept going. The next set of records were back to focusing on newer Betty Crocker products, but they included useful sensory cooking tips they hadn't included before, like testing a cake by putting your finger in the crack at the top, and it's done if it feels dry and no batter sticks to your fingers.

29:13And then finally, there was a six-disc set in 1962. Betty Crocker, what a legend. But she wasn't the only celebrity who was busy making kitchens more accessible.

29:28Welcome to the French Chef. I'm Julia Child. Just as Betty Crocker wrapped up her involvement with kitchen accessibility, Julia Child was there to pick it up. Her show launched in 1963, and she became an icon of the accessibility movement because kitchens weren't made for people as tall as she was. And also, she really wanted her space to be efficient. She used some of the same techniques that Gilbreth would have used. So for instance, her counter heights were raised to 39 inches to accommodate her height. And she had this very famous pegboard wall where she arranged her battery to cuisine. And all of her pots and pans had a designated place that was silhouetted in marker.

30:20so as Julia said they always get home again. Continuing the accessibility theme PBS even first trialed closed captioning on Julia's show but her involvement went beyond her own kitchen in the tv show. Julia's whole project was to make cooking inclusive. She wanted all Americans to cook and know how to cook and take pleasure from it. But you couldn't have inclusive cooking unless you had inclusive kitchens. If you can't access a kitchen, you can't cook. So Julia ended up joining something called the Universal Kitchen Project in the 1990s. It was based at the Rhode Island School of Design, or RISD, and their goal was to rethink the kitchen to make it accessible for people of all ages and abilities.

31:14Julia actually volunteered as a research subject for the project. One of the best moments I had in doing this research was going to BRISD, to the archive, and watching the video of her lab test. And it's just hilarious. She came with three television crews, and you almost can't see her because of the scrum of television cameras around her. But that's what she brought was this incredible star power. The project was led by a designer called Mark Harrison, and it was really pretty radical for the time. RISD put out an oral history interview with Mark reflecting on it. I remember a department head from another school saying, how come you're worrying about designing for cripples?

32:06And so this was very telling. At the end of the project, they came up with two designs, Min, which was designed for small spaces like hotel rooms or studio apartments, and Max, a larger kitchen for families to work in together. RISD made a video about the designs. The centrally located oven is located within the comfort zone. Its position avoids heavy lifting in or out of the oven. At this point, a lot of the adaptations built into these kitchens are going to sound familiar. Adjustable height surfaces, movable elements, organization, minimizing the number of steps. There were some innovations, like a nifty pasta pot that could be drained from the bottom so you didn't have to lift a heavy pot over the sink.

32:50RISD claimed that a spaghetti dinner that took 400 steps to make in a regular kitchen only took 100 in their universal kitchen. The countertops have a no-spill edge, which functions as a grab rail. and the contrasting materials make borders visually clear. The kitchens were unveiled both at the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York and on Oprah's TV show in 1998. But at the end of the day, the designs weren't produced by any manufacturers. The barber says they still had a big impact. It indicated this new level of acceptance and interest in universal design. because previously, of course, designing for the elderly or the disabled, that was seen as quite niche and potentially stigmatizing.

33:45Companies did incorporate a lot of Lillian's ideas about workflow and the triangle of sink, fridge, stove. Like an Ikea fitted kitchen will often reflect that design philosophy. But height-adjustable countertops and other more individual adaptations, those were considered to be too expensive. Basically, it was still cheaper to make a standard kitchen with everything at a fixed height, so that's what manufacturers did. But where this idea of universal design did get some traction is in the world of kitchen gadgets. Those were cheaper and easier to design and sell rather than doing the hard work of adapting the built environment.

34:21It turns out that many of the tools in our kitchens today were inspired by designing for accessibility. We've got that story after the break. Want to make the most of your tax refund? File with TurboTax on Intuit Credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it. With a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goals. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app. Chronic migraine. 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine.

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36:00The Snake. Dream Team. In new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at it. Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney+. Rated PG. universal design was this design ethos really that aimed to make product design usable for everyone mark harrison the guy who had been in charge of the universal kitchen at risdy he'd already incorporated these ideas into his redesign of the cuisinart in the late 1970s He had suffered a brain injury when he was 11, and his motor skills were damaged. The Cuisinart he designed had, and still has, a rubber base and a large handle on the mixing bowl, and very large paddle switches with raised lettering.

36:55But probably the best-known icon of universal design in the kitchen is the OXO Good Grips range. OXO was born because of a guy named Sam Farber. He was a designer. He ran a company called Copco that made tea kettles and other types of home goods. He was super successful, and then he retired. And he went on a long vacation to the south of France with his wife, Betsy. So far, so delightful. I got a call from him one night. It was probably about 6 p.m. at night, maybe 7. So it was after midnight in France. That's David Stoll. He's the founder of a company called Smart Design. And before this phone call in the late 1980s, David and Sam had worked together for a few years on designs for Copco.

37:32And he was incredibly excited. He had this idea of a product they wanted to make. He and Betsy had been cooking a few nights before. and Betsy was complaining about the peeler. She was peeling an apple for their favorite dessert, an apple tart, and the metal peeler she was holding, and you all probably remember those metal peelers. It was just a bent piece of metal with a blade stuck on the end that it hurt her hands, and she was having trouble peeling. Betsy had arthritis, and she was also a designer. She had trained as an architect. She started squeezing clay around the metal peeler, making a handle that felt more comfortable.

38:14And she was convinced, too, that this could be better. So anyway, Sam had called me up, and he just couldn't sleep. And he wanted us to start on this immediately. Davin thought this was a great idea. We immediately contacted the American Arthritis Foundation just to see if we could connect with some people that could help us test products, could tell us a little bit more about it. The first thing they tackled was the handle. And one of the things we found out quite quickly, there was an optimum size. You know, as we tested with a number of people, if it was too big, you couldn't get a very good grip on it.

38:45And if it was too thin, you couldn't get a very good grip. And we realized that making it an oval actually gave you a lot more control over it because it tends not to rotate. And it also gives you an orientation in your hand. It's often right for the task. They also wanted a handle with a little give, and they wanted to give people some guidance about where to squish it. We just happened to have a sample of a bicycle handle nearby when we were meeting with Sam. The whole handle was covered with very thin fins that squished when you squeezed them between your thumb and forefinger. And we just looked at it and said, well, maybe we can make that area out with fins in it.

39:25Then they had to find exactly the right kind of durable, food-safe, but soft and grippy rubber. They ended up using a new rubbery material that was otherwise used for gaskets and dishwasher seals. And then to make the blades, they ended up partnering with a manufacturing company in Japan that historically had made samurai swords. We thought that, well, this is perfect if they can make a samurai sword. They can certainly make a very sharp peeler blade. A super sharp blade was also really important. That makes it way easier to peel. So, after all this time and money and prototype testing and development, David and Sam had a peeler.

40:00And they did tests with folks from the Arthritis Foundation, and even people with severe arthritis found it super usable. Time to launch it. They planned that launch for the 1990 Gourmet Products Show, but they didn't plan on launching it as a specialty tool for people with arthritis. The one thing that Sam was really insistent on is he said, this has to be for everybody. And by everybody, I mean everybody that doesn't need something special. because it's an economic reality of when you're producing a product. If you're only making it for a niche group, it's economically not feasible because the market's not big enough.

40:36And he said, well, this should be something that's in everybody's kitchen drawers. The initial response was intrigued but cautious. People thought it looked a little weird with this chunky black rubber handle. One home goods chain decided to stock the peeler, but it wasn't exactly flying off the shelves. Then Sam had the idea to display a bowl of carrots and have the peeler there chained to the table so you couldn't walk off with it. But this would let people actually see what it felt like and how it worked. And this time, sales totally took off. We would get letters from people that said, you know, I bought this peeler and for the first time in years, I'm actually enjoying cooking in the kitchen.

41:16This is so much easier to use than anything I've ever had before. In fact, I bought them for all my friends to use, too. Before long, there was an OXO Good Grips version of everything. One of the earliest products that we extended the range with was actually a mixing bowl. The mixing bowl, which Davin designed with his grandmother in mind, it's lightweight and it has rubber all up the sides to keep it from slipping, and it has an easy-to-grip brim. I have this set of mixing bowls, and I do not have arthritis, but I love that they don't slide around on the worktop when I'm whisking stuff. That's what we're always trying to do is integrate the solution in a way that it doesn't look like it's, you know, an accommodation.

42:01It looks, it's just better for everybody. Jules Sherrod does have motor skill issues and OXO GoodGrip's products were really useful for him when he started getting back into cooking and they still are today. Because the grip on them is thicker, it has a thicker handle. It's easier to use when you have issues with your hands, either with grasping or pain. A lot of both Jules and Christine's kitchen adaptations, the tools and design choices that let them get back into cooking again, they're the exact same things that Lillian and others pioneered decades ago. For both of them, how the kitchen and its contents are laid out is key.

42:37The place for everything and everything in its place, just like Julia Child. Organization, of course, is the biggest thing. So I've always been organized all of my life. And that really helped me transition, funnily enough, into the world and life of vision loss. So all of my spices, for example, are alphabetized in a drawer. And then I'll know in alphabetical order, like what I have in my spice cabinet. So I'll count down like, okay, let's say cinnamon is the fourth spice. Then I'll count, you know, in my drawer, the fourth spice bottle. I know that's cinnamon. And of course, I verify it by smelling it.

43:10Jules is short and he can't stand up for long to do food prep. So he finds he needs a lower countertop. He doesn't have one of those adjustable countertops that Lillian Gilbreth first recommended, so instead he likes to work at a dining room table. He also suggests a coffee table if that's the best height for you. So wherever you can sit down comfortably to do your food prep, that is where you should do it. Like Lillian, Jules is all about minimizing the effort he needs to make in the kitchen. And like Lillian and her third legs, he even has a measurement system for how much energy each of his recipes is going to take.

43:42He measures it in spoons. Spoon theory is that we only have so much spoons of energy to use. And those of us who have issues with fatigue, it's a lot easier for us to not only deplete our spoons, but it also takes us way more time to refill those spoons. And so my cookbook is organized in order of like the lowest amount of spoons all the way up to it's going to take all your spoons. You're only going to want to cook this for a very, very special occasion. Christine has raised bumps on her appliances, like on the oven and the toaster to tell her what setting they're on. And when it comes to the food itself, she relies on senses like touch and also smell and sound.

44:23I'll sometimes go up to the stove and put my ear up close to the pot and you can hear like the little bubbles and then you know, okay, it's simmering. Or if you hear loud bubbling and longer bubbling, then you know it's like a rolling boil, for example. A lot of Christine's sensory cues would be familiar to listeners of Betty Crocker's records. So you can easily, by experience, if you close your eyes, you'll know when garlic is smelling good and golden, and you'll know when it's starting to smell burnt. Same goes with meat, same goes with things with sugar in it. And then by feel too, it's like you can tell the proteins will start seizing up in a piece of meat as it's cooking.

45:02If it's still super tender, then it's maybe still raw. If it's still sticking to the pan, it's still raw. So it's just feeling around with the utensils and on the piece of meat or whatever that you're cooking in the pan as well. Of course, there have been new developments since the 50s and 60s that make kitchens even more accessible to, well, to everyone. Jules, as we said, became a huge Instant Pot fan when he first got back into the kitchen. Okay, so the first one I bought was the Instant Pot 6-Quart Duo Plus. And now I have a whole fleet of... I have one, two, three, six quart Instapots, an eight quart Instapot, a four quart Instapot, and a ninja foodie.

45:45So I now have six electronic pressure cookers. Is that correct? Yeah, six. His beloved Instant Pot lets Jules just set it and forget it. And it means he doesn't have to wrangle pots and pans on a stovetop. Because using a stove is not safe for me, especially on days that I have to use. I have a mobility chair and the days that I have to have it in the kitchen, you cannot open an oven when you're in a wheelchair. A lot of people have issues with other types of mobility issues that make cooking in an oven unsafe. This is why he's also completely in love with his air fryer. The downside to an air fryer is that you cannot cook as much in it.

46:26that's why I have two oven-type air fryers, because you need that extra space. Christine told us that she also relies on all sorts of tech, talking scales and talking thermometers. These days, we have the smartphones and smart tablets that we can use screen readers to read back to us what we write in there, and using smart home appliances to set timers and do conversions and stuff like that. It could seem that basically the kitchen is now totally accessible for everyone. But Christine says that not all of her solutions work for all cooking scenarios. She still relies on occasional assistance from her husband when she's home and from her colleagues at the restaurant.

47:04I would say the biggest challenge, and it still is to this day, is actually having to bake something. Even with Betty's tricks, it's still hard to know for sure how a cake or bread is doing in the oven. And so oftentimes baking proved to be a challenge because I wouldn't know if something is rising correctly in the oven or if it's browning correctly in the oven or how it's looking. The other big challenge is measuring hot liquids. Christine's husband has but raised bumps in her measuring cups so she can feel with her fingertips how much liquid there is. But if it's something hot, for example, if I have to measure boiling liquid, of course, I can't touch it without hurting myself.

47:42So that's where it gets tricky. Just like in baking, she has some solutions that get her partway there, but it's better if she has some help. Barbara says that's the way people are thinking about disability these days. The model for talking about disability has changed quite a bit. And one criticism, first of all, there's a move away from insisting on independence in designed environments. Part of this criticism is that insisting that everyone is productive and independent and self-sufficient is actually just normalizing a very particular American capitalist viewpoint. And maybe our kitchens don't need to enforce that.

48:27Barbara says instead there's more focus on the value of interdependence and care. And also people with a variety of different needs criticize the very idea of like a universal design. Because they feel that their very real differences and needs get erased in this kind of neutral discourse that seems almost uncomfortable with disability as a reality and as a sort of lived experience. Like the way Jules and Christine have different needs and have made different adaptations to meet those needs. These adaptations can be shared, they're useful to many, but they're not one size fits all. The other thing that these projects have been criticized for historically is reinforcing gender roles, that women's value was in the kitchen, and that kitchens that were more accessible to all women trapped them in those traditional roles.

49:21I'm a little more forgiving, I think, of the home economists and what they were trying to do. I still think that what the home economists were offering was a way of making female domestic labor visible and really trying through their kitchen studies to dignify that work. And then more generally, especially if you think about, you know, homemaker rehabilitation, it very much hinged on this recognition of women's work inside of the home as economically important or economically significant. And I think that, you know, was quite revolutionary as well. In fact, some of the folks involved with the kitchen accessibility projects we've talked about went on to inspire the wages for housework movement.

50:19That's a story we've saved for our special supporters newsletter, which you can get by supporting the show. Even with their flaws and limitations, these movements made our kitchens more accessible for all of us and gave us better tools and created spaces that were more welcoming to people with a variety of needs. These tools have benefited all of us. The Cuisinart, the Oxo line, the more efficient kitchens, they help everyone. And honestly, even those of us who don't have accessibility issues now, Christine says it doesn't mean we won't in the future. For me, I tend to harp a lot on the fact that disability is a topic that we all need to think about because as a society or as a population, we're all aging.

50:59And even if we don't become disabled, we surely will know someone who will, whether it's our grandparents, parents, you know, sometimes friends, children. And at the end of the day, kitchens that feel more comfortable for more people are better kitchens. All of our sort of built environments, I believe, would be substantially improved just by doing and following the process that someone like Gilbreth did, which is actually placing a user at the center of your design. sign. Thanks this episode to Jules Sherrod, Christine Ha, Laura Puaka, Barbara Penner, and Dave Instoll. We have links to their books, restaurants, companies, and research on our website, gastropod.com.

51:48Thanks also to archivist Ethan Pursoff for sharing his Betty Crocker records with us. And of course, to our producer, Claudia Geib. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with a brand new episode. Till then. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew This, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three month plan equivalent to$15 per month required.

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