US 5,363,746 · Granted 1994-11-15

The 1994 Robot Chef Patent That Dreamed of Hands-Free Desserts

Imagine a kitchen gadget that automatically mixes, heats, and cools ingredients in exactly the right order — all because you programmed it with a recipe beforehand. This patent covers a smart appliance that can make desserts and other foods by itself, with optional add-ons to squirt in ingredients at the perfect moment.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers an automated kitchen appliance that follows a pre-programmed sequence of heating, cooling, and mixing steps on ingredients inside a removable container. What's protected here is the combination of the programmable control system, the heated or cooled container, and optional accessory attachments that dispense recipe ingredients automatically during the cooking cycle. Anyone building a similar hands-off food-prep device with this exact workflow would be infringing.

Why it matters

This patent represents an early attempt to bring true automation to home dessert and food preparation — moving beyond simple blenders or mixers to a fully sequenced, programmable kitchen robot. Filed in the early 1990s, it shows how inventors were already imagining smart kitchen appliances that could learn recipes and execute them without human intervention. It's a snapshot of the kitchen-gadget innovation race that eventually led to more sophisticated cooking devices.

Real-world use

If someone built a tabletop dessert maker that automatically heats milk, mixes in powder, then cools the mixture — all by pressing one button — they'd be using the core idea this patent locks down.

Original USPTO abstract

A kitchen appliance which enables automatic preparation of desserts or other food products according to instructions pre-programmed into the appliance. Programmed preparation steps can include any desired sequence of heating, cooling, and mixing of ingredients placed in a detachable container of the appliance. Accessory attachments can be provided to the appliance for automatically adding recipe ingredients to the container during automatic preparation. A dispensing pump may also be provided for dispensing a heated or frozen product from the container.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,363,746
Filing date: 1992-12-09
Grant date: 1994-11-15
Assignee: Gordon Ellis D
Inventor(s): GORDON; ELLIS D.
CPC class: A23G9/305

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