Potato Mashers

Happy Thanksgiving!  The highlight of the day for many is the dinner of roast turkey with dressing and various side dishes such as mashed potatoes. 

Potatoes originated in Peru and were introduced to Europe in the 16^th century by Spanish explorers. At first, people viewed them with suspicion and were afraid to eat them, concerned that they were poisonous or would cause leprosy. Rulers in Prussia Russia had to order people to eat them.  The potato then traveled to America with European immigrants.

In 1747, a recipe for mashed potatoes appeared in a popular cookbook, The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse. Her recipe called for people to “Boil your potatoes, peel them, and put them into a saucepan, mash them well; to two pounds of potatoes put a pint of milk, a little salt, stir them well together, take care they don’t stick to the bottom, then take a quarter of a pound of better, stir it in and serve it up.”

To mash the potatoes, people then would have used a flat-bottom wood object with a handle.  These early wood potato mashers were hand-made, such as this one from the Benton County Historical Museum’s collection.

19th Century oak potato masher

Pioneer A. J. Gilliam made it from the limb of an oak tree he’d cut down in 1847 while clearing the land for the family’s first home in Oregon.

Later, machines turned the wood into mashers in a variety of styles and shapes for the handle and mallet portions.

Both my grandmother and great-grandmother used wooden mashers like these which are now part of my personal collection.

Wooden potato mashers were eventually replace by ones which had a metal mashing surface which produced lighter, fluffier mashed potatoes.

These too come in many designs and are sought by collectors.  A 1984 news story told of a California collector with 389 of them.

The shape of the typical wooden potato mashers also led British soldiers in World War I to nickname their grenades “potato mashers.”

WWI "potato masher" from Argonne battlefield

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon