From my great-grandmother (called MaMa by her descendants), an inimitable Southern cook and hostess, I inherited a wooden spoon and a set of Chantilly silver that she purchased for herself from wages earned on the Singer Sewing Machine sales floor. Recently, I found out that another piece of MaMa's kitchen is still in the family: her West Bend Deep Fryer, which she purchased in the mid-1970s and passed along to my mother when my parents bought their first beach condo.

As an over-active child, I paid no attention to the equipment my parents used to fry the bream and bass that my brother and I caught in a lake near our condo. Fast forward two decades, during which my family indulged in fried foods less and less. The fryer had fallen into disuse until a few weeks ago, when I decided to try my hand at homemade French fries to accompany some rib-eyes that my cousin sent for Christmas. I was spending a week with my family at our current condo on the Florida panhandle, and my mother mentioned that I could use the old deep fryer.

Heirloom silver and an old wooden spoon are one thing, but antique appliances? Between the fryer's advanced age and my complete inexperience with fries, I was apprehensive to say the least. Find a picture of the results after the jump.


I'll let the picture of the fries speak for itself. You could chalk it up to beginner's luck, or to some of my great-grandmother's tremendous culinary acumen rubbing off on me, but I give all the credit to the machine. A Singer saleswoman for over four decades, MaMa knew appliances, and in this case she chose a real workhorse. I'm pretty sure the temperature gauge is a bit off, but beyond that, I predict that I'll heat up the old West Bend for years to come.