The Best Kitchen Gadget Of The 1600s Was A Small, Short-Legged Dog

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In the hot, smoky kitchens of 17th-century Europe, you'd find a lot of things you'd never see in kitchens today; a large open fire, an iron roasting spit, and oh - a giant contraption holding a small, live, constantly running dog.

For hundreds of years the now-extinct turnspit dog was specially bred just to turn a roasting mechanism for meat. And weirdly, this animal was a high-tech fixture for the professional and home cook from the 16th century until the mid-1800s.