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Cooking with Glass: How Pyrex Transformed Every Kitchen into a Home-Ec Lab (collectorsweekly.com)
44 points by zipop on Oct 9, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments



This reads as a bit of a love letter to Corning Glass. If you're ever in upstate NY, the Corning Glass museum (in Corning, naturally) is perfectly worth visiting. They have ancient glass from Egypt, and a copy of the huge 200-inch glass mirror that they made for Palomar Observatory, among other trinkets.


On a tangent, here's a youtube clip of cleaning and re-coating an 8 metre mirror.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkV8RRRu7gE


The museum's about 50% technical glass and 50% art. It's one of my favorite museums anywhere.


Pyrex sold in the U.S. today is tempered glass, not borosilcate. I only skimmed the article but I didn't see that mentioned.


Specifically, they switched to a Corning-designed soda lime glass that has much better shatter resistance, but less thermal shock resistance.

However, I don't care what Pyrex consumer products say, either back when it was ran directly by Corning, or when they spun World Kitchen off, putting a fridge cold borosilicate or soda lime Pyrex product into an oven risks blowing it up, as does taking an oven hot dish and putting it on anything other than a wire cooling rack or a pot holder.

Just don't do it.

Fridge cold into the microwave, however, is fine, as there is no instant thermal shock there.

That said, I have Pyrex older than I am that is borosilicate, stuff that's a bit newer, and then stuff I've bought that is the new soda lime. People act as if the soda lime glass is shit, and it's not: it is the same high quality Pyrex products we've always enjoyed.

As a warning: do not buy Anchor Hocking's knock off for any sort of heated cooking. I don't care what they say, their shit will happily blow up; I know two people who this has happened to, and the Internet is full of bad reviews over this. Anchor Hocking glass products are fine for kitchen storage, however, just never cook with them.


> as does taking an oven hot dish and putting it on anything other than a wire cooling rack

I can attest to this. I learned this lesson the hard way when I took a lasagna dish out of the oven and put it on a marble marble cutting board. The Pyrex dish literately exploded on my counter top.

Consumer Reports has investigated this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyhdMa1ikKM


Also, after removing a covered casserole dish from the oven, take the top off for a second. Otherwise moisture can form a seal around the lid so tight that when the air inside cools, it will shatter the pot inwards.


If you want resistance to thermal shock, go and get some old Corning Ware from a thrift store. Corning Ware can go directly from the freezer to the oven without damage.


Yes. I had a nice steak in a Pyrex brand dish, in the oven. It was around 1986. When I took it out, I set it down on a cold electric stove burner. Kaboom.


You would have to read all the way to the end:

"Today, Pyrex is manufactured by World Kitchen, which licensed the brand from Corning beginning in 1998, thus giving future generations the chance to grow up with Pyrex, too."

This omits that current "Pyrex" is, as you say, not borosilicate.

According to wiki:

"World Kitchen justified this change by stating that [tempered] soda-lime glass was cheaper to produce, is the most common form of glass used in bakeware in the US, and that it also had higher mechanical strength than borosilicate—making it more resistant to breakage when dropped, which it believed to be the most common cause of breakage in glass bakeware."


The piece does say this: "In 1942, the Museum of Modern Art praised the functionality of Pyrex designs by featuring several products in its exhibition “Useful Objects in Wartime under $10.” Around the same time, the company was developing a line of tough white dishes for military mess halls made from tempered soda-lime instead of borosilicate, making them less heat-resistant but also less likely to shatter when dropped. After World War II, this military glassware evolved into the brand’s popular Opalware line of kitchenware."


Another interesting book on material science is

'Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World' by Mark Miodownik http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-Matters-Exploring-Marvelous-Mate...

actually here is a sample chapter

http://www.hmhco.com/~/media/sites/home/educators/webinars/s...

The author has also an interesting lecture on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEWFJiMK6CE


From the link below, the older borosilicate is safer.

https://youtu.be/UyhdMa1ikKM


The borosilicate glass items Consumer Reports liked are now available in the US, imported from France, and they're no more expensive than the Pyrex-in-name-only stuff. The Consumer Reports article lists for $29 an item that Bed, Bath and Beyond now sells for $10. Search for "borosilicate" and whatever cookery item you want.


I'd be interested in similar articles about Schott glass. They make probably the world's finest optical glass.




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