Harnessing the power of steam to cook your meals. 50 years of pressure cooking in Australia

26 March 2026

Window-Smasher Grabs A Cooker

Melbourne, Thurs:

A thief threw a brick through the window of V. R. Leser’s shop in Fitzroy and stole a pressure cooker and two alarm clocks. A witness said the thief drove up in a car, grabbed the loot and drove away again in a matter of seconds.

This item arguably shows the prominent place of the pressure cooker in the 1940’s Australian kitchen. They had been in Australian kitchens since the early 1900s.

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Small Mulch

Paul van Reyk
My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.