Breadcrumbs: Part 2 – The Bread Grater
On patents, restaurant efficiency, and labor-saving devices
The following is adapted from a guest post I wrote for the Wordloaf newsletter. It is the second part of a two part series (part one is here). Wordloaf is an excellent, insightful newsletter all about bread, including recipes, think pieces, and much more. It’s a wonderful read for any bread lover, and let’s be honest, who isn’t a bread lover?
In the kitchen, breadcrumbs can be put to productive use. Put them on top of casseroles, use them to coat chicken breasts, mix them into meatballs.
Joseph Lee realized this. Born to enslaved parents in South Carolina in 1849, he amassed an impressive culinary empire in Massachusetts, including a hotel, an inn, and a catering business. As his business grew in the 1890s, Lee noticed how much bread was often wasted. He set out to solve this problem by designing a new tool: A bread grater.
“By the use of my invention,” Lee wrote, “the scraps and crusts of bread which come from the table can be readily crushed and crumbed, thereby effecting a great saving in establishments where the bread waste from the table is considerable.” The crumbs could then be used in cooking.
Prior to Lee’s invention, grating bread for cooking was time-consuming. For instance, in Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), Isabella Beeton recommends home cooks purchase a handheld “bread grater,” but using such a device in Beeton’s time required slowly raking a stale loaf against a grater, similar to how we grate cheese today.
Lee’s invention, on the other hand, was efficient: It was an oblong metal container with holes along the bottom. A loaf of bread was placed on top, and as the crank was turned, the bread would be pulled through cogs, which would tear it into tiny pieces. It was perfect for the restaurant kitchen. He filed for a patent in 1895.
This patent is noteworthy. For Black men in 1800s America, obtaining a patent was no small feat. Until 1868, Black Americans couldn’t file for patents because the 1857 Dred Scott case ruled African Americans, free or enslaved, were not US citizens and thus could not file for US patents. In 1868, the ratification of the fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to anyone born in America, but filing for a patent was still difficult for 19th and 20th century Black inventors. According to economics professor Lisa Cook, segregation made it challenging for Black inventors to connect with patent lawyers, who were nearly all white and lived in white-only commercial districts, and with such limited access to legal systems, Black inventors often had trouble defending against patent infringement.
Despite these challenges, Lee successfully secured his patent (likely because he already had financial resources and connections thanks to his restaurant business). In 1901, he sold the patent to The Goodell Company, which began mass producing the grater. Within five years, major hotels and catering companies across the United States were using Lee’s machine, efficiently turning old bread into new breadcrumbs.
According to food historian Bee Wilson, it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the phrase “labor-saving device” entered the culinary vocabulary. The term captured a new trend, an influx of tools designed to save cooks time and energy in the kitchen. Lee’s device embraced this mentality: As he noted in his patent, the grater led to “great savings in establishments where bread waste from the table is considerable.” After all, we invent things to make our lives easier.
In a world where time is a precious commodity, bread graters and other labor-saving devices offer a tangible reminder that efficiency and convenience can enhance our lives.
Special thanks to ChatGPT for, in the spirit of labor-saving technologies, writing the final sentence to this post.