Epiphany

[pne]

I just found out what an "electric kettle" is. Or perhaps I should say that I found out what a "Wasserkocher" is called in English—I knew the appliance from Germany, and I had heard the word before, but had never connected the two.

I kept reading about how nearly every British home has an electric kettle and how they think Americans are weird for boiling water on the stovetop or in the microwave... and I kept having this mental image of a nice old-fashioned tea kettle (with spout on the side and handle on top) with a cable hanging out the end which you plug in. Not the tallish more-or-less-cylindrical device I know from here.

Comments

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

All of the electric kettles I've seen in Canada have a handle on the top and a spout in the front. (For example, like this (http://207.142.131.37/thumb/KE1610W.gif).

However, now that I've gone to Google image search and tried to find a kettle that looked like my parents', it took me a long time to find one that wasn't cylindrical...I've never seen those before!

[mendel.livejournal.com]

The handle-on-top tends to be your $15 electric kettle which takes as long to boil water as the stovetop does (and practically looks like it has a stove coil inside it), stay on until there's a fire, and are next to impossible to clean. The $30-50 ones boil water in under a minute, are often cordless, shut off when the water reaches boiling, and tend to be tall and cylindrical.

If you had one of the $15 ones you'd think that there was no point to an electric kettle where there's a stove, and that you'd just use them in office kitchens and dorm rooms, but once you have one of the fast ones there's no point in boiling water in a kettle on the stove anymore.

We've got one of these (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005KB3E/) which is apparently a fast boil even for electric kettles. (Even better, I bought ours off a coworker who was moving back to Australia, for $10.)

(Pne, what's "kocher"?)

[pne.livejournal.com]

are often cordless, shut off when the water reaches boiling

Those are attributes I associate with the things, too. (Ours is cordless, and that's really useful sometimes!)

(Pne, what's "kocher"?)

It's from "kochen" + agentive "-er". "Kochen" is literally "cook" but is better translated as "of water: boil (v.i.)" here - so something like "thing that makes things boil".

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Ah of course. I was distrustful of babelfish:

<mendel> pea, x from de Wasserkocher
<pea> mendel: Water digester

Hey, where'd the water go?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Well I'll be - that is what Babelfish says. I've no idea how it reaches that conclusion, though; "to digest" is "verdauen" usually.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hm, according to LEO (http://dict.leo.org/), there are technical senses where "digester" corresponds to "Kocher" (marked "Papier und Zellstoff", i.e. in the paper and cellulose(?) processing industry?).

Googling for "water digester", though, mostly brings up sites in German-speaking countries advertising the kitchen inventory of holiday homes in English - heh.

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if that paper-industry meaning corresponds more to "evaporator"?

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

I don't drink tea or coffee, so I don't actually own a kettle. The one I was speaking of is my parents' from the 80s, so. :)

And kocher == "cooker", IIRC.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Hot chocolate! Apple cider! Neo-citran! Instant oatmeal!

[fweebles.livejournal.com]

Hot chocolate is the only one of those I'd have on a regular basis (and by "regular", I mean maybe half a dozen times in a winter), and for that I'll just heat my water in the microwave or something. :)

[allegrox.livejournal.com]

Once I start drinking hot chocolate, I can't stop. :)
I don't have a kettle, though. I just use my trusty microwave. That's actually quite a bit faster than the stove. I doubt I'd get much increase in speed from a new appliance.

[asciident]

Neat. Maybe I'll get one of those at some point.

I'm one of those "weird" Americans who still boils water in a kettle on the stove. ;) It only takes 5 minutes. *shrug*

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

The tea kettle in my (British) kitchen looks just like an old-fashioned kettle with a cord coming out, so that's how I pictured it, too! My (American) kitchen doesn't even have a kettle, though it does have a coffeemaker that results in coffee in a sort of kettle-shaped thing.