Bain-marie

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Simple water bath
Chafing dish for keeping kettle meat warm

The (also the ) Bain-Marie (French for Marienbad , water is) one in the restaurant used kitchen appliance to keep food warm.

The bain-marie, formerly also called balneum Mariae , is a heated water basin in which scooped dishes are kept warm. It usually has an inlet and outlet and is widely used as a gas as well as an electrically operated device. The water bath distributes the heat in the food, but the dish cannot burn because, as a matter of principle, temperatures above 100 ° C, the boiling point of water , cannot be reached. In contrast, the simmer pot , which works on the same principle, is a one-piece kitchen appliance.

The Gastronorm containers with a water bath and electrical, gas or alcohol- fired heating used in the catering industry are known as chafing dishes .

Bain-maries are used in the food service to heat the hot counter . In the kitchen, the water bath is also used to heat sensitive dishes, e.g. B. for melting chocolate .

In chemistry there is a similar apparatus under the Latin name balneum mariae .

In the carpentry trade, the “Marientopf” is a double-walled water bath to keep the bone glue warm .

History and origin of name

The invention as well as the name supposedly go back to Maria the Jewess , who lived in Alexandria between the 1st and 3rd centuries and is said to have developed a double-walled water pot ( simmer pot ) for slowly heating substances. However, this assumption is based on a mix-up, since Maria describes various devices and ovens in her alchemical writings, but of all things there is no water bath underneath. The water bath is said to have been known centuries before, as this device was already mentioned by Theophrast and Hippocrates .

Web links

Wiktionary: Bain-Marie  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Also: Balneum Mariae or Balneum maris called, see Zeno.org , search term: Marienbad.
  2. Bain-Marie in the Duden
  3. Bain-Marie in Brockhaus 1911
  4. Thomas Gleinser: Anna von Diesbach's Bernese 'Pharmacopoeia' in the Erlacher version of Daniel von Werdts (1658), Part II: Glossary. (Medical dissertation Würzburg), now at Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1989 (= Würzburg medical-historical research , 46), p. 47.
  5. ^ Oskar Edmund: Origin and expansion of alchemy . ISBN 978-5-88096-857-2 , pp. 50 ( google.de [accessed on March 23, 2018]).
  6. Karin Figala: Alchemy: Lexicon of a Hermetic Science . CH Beck, 1998, ISBN 978-3-406-44106-6 , pp. 235 ( google.de [accessed on March 23, 2018]).
  7. ^ Raphael Patai: The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book . Princeton University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1-4008-6366-2 ( google.de [accessed March 23, 2018]).