Pressure Cookers
Pressure cookers are cooking pots with a pressure-proof lid. Cooking at pressure allows the temperature to rise above the normal boiling point of water (100 degrees Celsius at sea level), which speeds up the cooking and makes it more thorough.
Pressure cookers usually have two safety valves. One is a hole upon which a weight sits. The other is a sealed rubber grommet which is ejected in a controlled explosion if the first valve gets blocked.
The term safety valve is also used metaphorically.
Read more about this topic: Safety Valve
Famous quotes containing the word pressure:
“This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to sudden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)