Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Made in Sweden
The award-winning Assistent Original® kitchen assistant meets all of your kitchen needs, from making milling and baking easy to helping you make sausages, pasta and smoothies.
Swedish-made retro design for all your kitchen needs “A lot of people think of our machine as being all about baking, but the awardwinning Assistent Original® can do so much more,” says Thomas Håkansson, CEO of Ankarsrum Kitchen AB. “It’s a multi-functional product that you can use for all your kitchen needs – from baking your cookies and bread to mincing your own meat, cutting vegetables, milling flour, making sausages, pasta and smoothies – it meets pretty much all your kitchen needs!” By Linnea Dunne | Photos: Ankarsrum
The story of Assistent Original® has its roots in 1937. Civil engineer Alvar Lenning was given the task of redesigning the quite bulky machine that was then available for professional use only. In 1940 a neater, low-maintenance model with a streamlined alloy casing, a cream lacquered motor stand, a 46 | Issue 90 | July 2016
stainless steel bowl and wooden blade and roller was launched. The reception was overwhelmingly positive. “The design is extremely well thought out,” said one early user, Mrs. M. Tengvald. “In fact, it’s tempting to say it’s ingenious. I would count it as a good deed if I could persuade some men out here in the
country to buy it and thus make the lives of housewives a little easier.” Ankarsrum, meanwhile, was founded in 1655 in a small Swedish locality by the same name. It was initially set up to, among other things, support the military force at the time with cannons and cannon balls from their grey iron foundry. With time, Ankarsrum moved on to produce cast iron stoves and, when electricity was brought in, electrical ovens – and the latter was what made Electrolux think of a new fruitful collaboration. At the end of the ‘60s, Electrolux acquired Ankarsrum and moved the production of the kitchen machine there.
