GB2359247A - Food Portioner - Google Patents

Abstract

A food portioner for cutting a cake into portions of equal size has an annular frame 2 of rigid material which supports a number of thin wires 3 arranged regularly along diameters of the frame. This enables a cake to be sliced easily and the use of thin wires helps to minimise any damage to a decorative topping on the cake.

Description

2359247 FOOD PORTIONER This invention relates to a food portioner. It

relates particularly to a tool that can enable cakes and pies to be marked out into equal areas and then sliced into separate portions without causing undue wastage of the food material involved.

When a knife is used to slice a cake, there is some difficulty in ensuring that the resulting sliced portions will be of equal size. This difficulty is particularly significant when the cake is circular in shape and the need to take extra care may mean that this task can be expected to take an unreasonable length of time. In the catering industry, an error made in the slicing operation can prove to be costly since this can result in the production of unsaleable small portions. There have been attempts in the past to provide a marker tool which will leave cutting lines in a top surface of the cake that can then be used to guide the use of a separate knife. Some improvement on this practice was disclosed in Patent Application No. GB2173392A where a kitchen utensil of a circular shape is formed with a radial array of upright metal blades.

This kitchen utensil clearly enables the marking and slicing operation to be carried out in a single movement but the utensil is bulky in shape and of a complicated construction such that it may be quite difficult to clean it effectively after use. In addition, the broad blade sides will be likely to trap residues of the food material and this will lead to wastage of the food involved. If a cake for slicing has been provided with a decorative cake topping, the use of a broad slicing blade also will tend to drag at the topping material surface so that the cosmetic appearance of the cake top will be damaged.

We have now discovered an alternative construction of food portioner which occupies only a small amount of space when it is in storage and which avoids the use of surfaces likely to trap residues of the food material.

According to the invention, there is provided a food portioner comprising an annular frame of rigid material which supports a number of thin wires arranged regularly along -2diameters of +.lie frame. Conveniently, the wires are made of a stainless steel alloy. The wires may be supported under tension on suitable anchor means located in the frame.

The annular frame may be a metal ring. Alternatively, the frame may be a suitable plastics material. One preferable plastics material is a polyacetal composition.

The wires may be attached to the frame by a metal or plastics sleeve which is secured by a lock pin which passes through both the frame and the sleeve. The sleeve may include a wall defining a through hole whiell is directed transversely of the sleeve major axis. Each sleeve may be supported by a pin which is positioned transversely of the sleeve major axis. The sleeve may have a shoulder effective to prevent a stop means on a wire end from being pulled through the sleeve. The wire end stop means may be a metal crimp to which the wire piece is attached. A plastics insert body may be fitted to electrically insulate the wire material from the sleeve.

The invention also comprises a method of constructing a food portioner as just described.

By way of example, some particular embodiments of the invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a plan view of the food portioner, Figure 2 shows side and cross-sectional views of a wire anchor means forming part of the food portioner, Figure 3 is an enlarged cross-sectional view taken on the line 111-111 of Figure 1, Figure 4 is a partial enlarged cross-sectional view taken halfway through the thickness of the portioner frame depicted in Figure 1, Figure 5 is a view similar to Figure 4 showing a different embodiment, and, Figure 6 is a cross-sectional view of a plastics insert body intended for use in the embodiment of Figure 5.

As shown in Figure 1, the food portioner 1 has a circular frame 2 which is formed of a black polyacetal composition. In the present embodiment, the shape was machined from a block of the composition in sheet form. The frame 2 supports eight wire pieces 3 which are located across diameters of the frame and which are thus spaced apart by an angle of 221/2' from each other. The wire pieces are of a single core stainless steel alloy wire material. The wire pieces are supported at their ends on anchor means which are secured in the material of the frame. Figure 1 additionally shows the end surfaces of a series of lock pins 4 which form part of the anchor means for securing the wire pieces.

Figure 2 shows one anchor means in greater detail. The end of each wire piece passes through a moulded plastics sleeve 6 and the wire end is then secured behind a shoulder 7 on the sleeve by a soft metal crimp being attached to the wire end. All of the wire pieces 3 intended for attachment to the frame 2 are initially prepared at both ends by having the sleeve 6 and a metal crimp being attached thereto.

The plastics sleeve 6 further includes a wall defining a through hole 8 which is positioned at right angles to the major axis of the sleeve. The through hole 8 is capable of having a lock pin passed through this opening and this pin will then serve to attach the sleev to the frame 2.

The enlarged view of Figure 3 enables these parts to be seen in greater detail. The frame 2 is seen to support the plastics sleeve 6 in a cylindrical opening which is formed in the material of the frame. The sleeve 6 was initially prepared by having a wire end pushed through an axial bore thereof and the wire piece 3 was then secured by the attachment of a metal crimp 9 to the wire end. The crimp 9 was an aluminium alloy cylinder measuring 4 -4millimetres by 2.5 millimetres diameter and having a central hole for insertion of the wire piece 3. The crimp 9 was attached by a compression technique to the wire after an array of grooves had been pressed into the wire end.

The wire and sleeve 6 were then attached to the frame 2 by pushing a lock pin 11 through preformed holes in the frame and through the hole 8 located in the sleeve 6. The lock pin 11 was formed of an aluminium alloy and it measured 8 millimetres in length and 3 millimetres in diameter. The lock pin 11 thus served to retain the sleeve 6 in the frame and the wire 3 carrying the crimp 9 was secured against the shoulder 7 on the sleeve 6.

Figure 4 is a cross-sectional view through the sleeve 6 in the plane of the frame 2.

Figure 5 shows a modified arrangement for making the anchor means by which the wire pieces are secured. This arrangement is to be preferred where a risk of electrolytic corrosion can be expected between two dissimilar metals when these are in contact, for example, in a dishwasher environment. Figure 5 shows the sleeve 6, in this instance being formed of an aluminium alloy, having the internal shoulder 7 as already described. In contact with the shoulder 7, there is placed a plastics insert body 12 which is formed of a Food Grade Nylon 6 material. In assembly of the wire pieces 3 for this modified arrangement, each wire end is passed through the metal sleeve 6, through the insert body 12 and then is secured by the crimp 9 being attached to the wire end.

Use of the insert body 12 thus acts as a seal around the metal of the wire piece 3 and it prevents the stainless steel of the wire piece from being brought into electrical contact with water and the aluminium of the sleeve 6. This means therefore will reduce any tendency for electrolytic corrosion to occur when the food portioner is immersed in water.

Figure 6 is a cross-sectional view of the plastics insert body 12.

In assembly of the food portioner 1, the material of the frame 2 is initially machined to shape and sockets to receive the plastics sleeves 6 and lock pins 4 are formed in the material. The wire pieces 3 are then cut to length and fitted with sleeves 6 and soft metal crimps 9 as already described. The first wire piece is fitted to the frame 2 by the sleeve 6 being inserted into the appropriate socket of the frame and then it is secured by a lock pin 11 being passed through the frame at right angles to this socket. The wire piece 3 is then secured at its opposite end to the relevant socket of the frame 2. The wire pieces 3 are arranged to be slightly shorter in length than the geometric measurement of the distance across the frame so that the frame sides need to be sprung slightly together in order to be able to insert the second lock pin. This arrangement thus ensures that the wire pieces will be maintained under a slight tension so that the wires will not tend to sag significantly when the food portioner is in use.

The remaining wire pieces 3 are then secured in the frame 2 in order to complete the assembly.

In use of the food portioner, when the cutting of a cake into portions is required, the portioner is placed on top of the cake and it can then be pushed straight through the body of the cake. The wire pieces 3 act to cut cleanly through the cake body and there is no significant tendency for cake material to adhere to the wires as these are only of a very small cross-section. The cake will therefore be cut cleanly into the required number of portions and these will, of course, be accurately formed and of identical sizes. After use, the food portioner may be washed by hand or in a dishwasher. There is little tendency for any cake material to be retained on the wires of the food portioner so the wastage of food is minimised.

The food portioner has been found to be very convenient to use since it can perform the task of marking and cutting the cake in a single operation. However, if the food portioner is required only to mark the cake, then it is still useful for this purpose. The article is comparatively inexpensive to construct and it should last for many years when in service. When not in use, the article occupies only a small volume of space since it has only a shallow depth in cross-section. Where a cake has been provided with a decorative cake topping, the use of the food portioner can enable the cake to be sliced with only a minimum amount of damage to the appearance of the cake top.

The foregoing description of embodiments of the invention has been given by way of example only and a number of modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims. For instance, the food portioner has been described as capable of dividing a cake into sixteen portions but, of course, with a different embodiment, the number of portions could be made larger or smaller than this number. Suitable alternative numbers are ten, twelve and fourteen. Instead of the single core stainless steel wire material that was used for the wire pieces, a high tensile specification stainless steel wire could be employed. The frame part of the food portioner has been described as being cut from a block of a plastics composition, however, in a different embodiment the frame part could be formed by a moulding process.

Claims (7)

1 A food portioner comprising an annular frame of rigid material which supports a number of thin wires arranged regularly along diameters of the frame.

2 A food portioner as claimed in Claim 1, in which the wires are made of a stainless steel alloy.

3 A food portioner as claimed in Claim 1 or 2, in which each wire is mounted on a sleeve which is located in the frame.

4 A food portioner as claimed in Claim 3, in which each said sleeve includes a wall defining a through hole which is directed transversely of the sleeve major axis.

5 A food portioner as claimed in Claim 3 or 4, in which each sleeve is supported by a pin which is positioned transversely of the sleeve major axis.

6 A food portioner as claimed in any one of Claims 3 to 5, in which each sleeve includes a shoulder effective to prevent a stop means on a wire end from being pulled through said sleeve.

7 A food portioner as claimed in Claim 6, in which a wire end stop means is formed by a metal crimp to which the wire piece is attached. 8 A food portioner as claimed in any one of Claims 3 to 7, in which each sleeve includes a plastics insert body fitted to electrically insulate the wire material from the sleeve. 9 A food portioner as claimed in any one of Claims 1 to 8, in which the frame is formed of a plastics material. 10 A food portioner as claimed in Claim 9, in which the plastics material is a polyacetal composition.

A food portioner substantially as hereinbefore described, with reference to any one of the accompanying drawings.