Rice cooker
kitchen appliance
A rice cooker or rice steamer is an automated kitchen appliance designed to boil or steam rice. It consists of a heat source, a cooking bowl, and a thermostat. The thermostat measures the temperature of the cooking bowl and controls the heat. Complex, high-tech rice cookers may have more sensors and other components, and may be multipurpose.
The term rice cooker formerly applied to non-automated dedicated rice-cooking utensils, which have an ancient history (a ceramic rice steamer dated to 1250 BC is on display in the British Museum). It now applies mostly to automated cookers. Electric rice cookers were developed in Japan, where they are known as suihanki (Japanese: 炊飯器, literally, "boil-rice-device").
History
The NJ-N1, developed by Mitsubishi Electric in 1923, was the first electric rice cooker, a direct ancestor of today's automatic electric rice cookers. At that time, electricity was not widely used in ordinary households; it was for use on ships. It was a simple mechanism that heated with an attached heating coil without automation.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rice cooker” is kitchen appliance. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rice, cooker and kitchen, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “kitchen appliance” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1137500. The Library of Congress control number is sh2010012791. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1250 and 1923.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Rice cooker”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Rice cooker primary sources, Rice cooker archive and Rice research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Rice cooker”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Rice cooker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.