The history
4,500 years from frying cakes in hot fat in ancient Egypt to a fan, a heater and a basket on kitchen counters from London to Ahmedabad.
People have fried food in hot oil for thousands of years, because hot fat makes food brown, crisp and tasty. Scientists later learned that moving air carries heat, and that browning is a chemical reaction between sugars and proteins. In the 20th century engineers put fans inside ovens, and in 2006 a Dutch inventor squeezed that idea into a small box that blows very hot air around a basket of chips. Worries about fat, a surprise discovery about browned starch, a pandemic and an energy crisis then turned the air fryer into one of the most popular kitchen gadgets on Earth.
c. 2500 BCE
Frying food in fat (believed)
Ancient Egypt
1629
Written record of fried potatoes
Chile
1834
The word “convection”
William Prout, England
1912
Browning reaction described
Louis-Camille Maillard, France
1945
Convection oven in wide use
William L. Maxson, USA
1973
Countertop convection oven
Farberware, USA
2006
Hot-air fryer sold to the public
Tefal ActiFry, Groupe SEB, France
2010
Philips Airfryer shown
Fred van der Weij and Philips, Netherlands
2500 BCE – 1900
Cooks around the world learn that food dropped into hot oil or lard turns golden and crisp, from Egyptian tiger nut cakes to Roman doughnuts, tempura, fries and fish and chips.
2500 BCE
c. 2500 BCE (believed)
Frying is believed to have first appeared in Egyptian cooking during the Old Kingdom, around 2500 BCE. The exact date is uncertain, because cooking leaves few traces. Cooks heated animal fat or plant oils in shallow pans over fire.
Why it mattered. Hot fat is the oldest way to make food brown and crisp, the result an air fryer tries to copy.
1450 BCE
c. 1450 BCE
The tomb of Rekhmire, a powerful official, shows people grinding tiger nuts, shaping cakes with dates and honey, and frying them. Inscriptions say fat was used. Today the Egyptian archaeobotanist Mennat-Allah El Dorry has recreated the recipe by experiment.
Why it mattered. It is some of the clearest early evidence that people fried food on purpose.
160 BCE
c. 160 BCE
In his farming book De Agri Cultura, Cato wrote a recipe for globi: balls of cheese and spelt dropped into hot lard in a copper pan, turned with two sticks, then spread with honey and poppy seeds. Frying in olive oil was already known in Greece, and the later Roman cookbook Apicius has fried dishes too.
Why it mattered. It is one of the oldest written frying recipes we can still cook today.
1580
late 1500s
Portuguese visitors brought the idea of coating food in flour and frying it to Nagasaki. The name probably comes from the Latin tempora, the Catholic fasting days when people ate fried vegetables and fish instead of meat. Japanese cooks then made the batter lighter and crisper.
Why it mattered. Frying spread around the world by trade, and each place made it its own.
1855
1629 to c. 1855
A Chilean manuscript mentions papas fritas, fried potatoes, eaten in 1629. A famous Belgian story says villagers fried potato slices before 1680, but historians doubt it. The long thin fries we know most likely took shape in Paris around 1855.
Why it mattered. Fries became the food that air fryers are judged on.
1860
c. 1860
Joseph Malin is said to have opened the first shop selling fried fish with chips in east London around 1860. John Lees did something similar in the north of England around 1863. Fried fish is often said to have come to Britain with Jewish families of Spanish and Portuguese origin, though historians still argue about the details.
Why it mattered. Deep-fried food became cheap everyday food, and later a health worry.
1700 – 1960
Scientists work out how moving air and liquids carry heat, give it the name convection, and discover the chemical reaction that turns food brown and tasty.
1701
Newton published, without his name, a short paper in Latin about heat. He noted that a hot object cools faster when it is much hotter than its surroundings. Today the idea is often written with a breeze in mind: moving air takes heat away faster.
Why it mattered. It is the root of the physics of how hot air passes heat into food.
1834
In a book on chemistry and weather, the doctor and chemist William Prout used a common fireplace to explain that heat moves in three ways. He coined the word convection for heat carried along by a moving liquid or gas, like warm air rising up a chimney.
Why it mattered. An air fryer is a forced convection machine, so it runs on the idea Prout named.
1912
8 January 1912
Maillard, a French doctor and chemist, heated sugars with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and watched them turn brown. His short note to the French Academy of Sciences described the reaction now named after him. It runs fast at about 140 to 165 °C and makes hundreds of new flavours.
Why it mattered. The Maillard reaction is what makes air-fried chips golden and tasty, and it needs dry heat, not oil.
1953
Hodge, an African American chemist, published a paper that laid out the steps of the Maillard reaction as a clear scheme. Food scientists still use his map to understand browning. It became one of the most cited papers in food chemistry.
Why it mattered. Knowing the steps let cooks and engineers control browning instead of guessing.
1945 – 2005
Engineers put fans inside ovens to blow hot air around the food, first on aeroplanes, then in homes and on countertops.
1945
Maxson, a former US Navy officer, built the Whirlwind oven to heat frozen meals on aircraft. A small motor blew hot air around plates stacked one above another, so every meal warmed evenly. It was the first convection oven in wide use, and Pan Am served his frozen Sky Plates to passengers.
Why it mattered. Blowing hot air around food cooks it faster and more evenly, the basic idea of every air fryer.
1971
The German company Neff introduced its CircoTherm system, which circulated hot air around the oven so food cooked more evenly. Fan ovens slowly became normal in European kitchens. Many cooks call them fan-assisted or convection ovens.
Why it mattered. It brought forced hot air from aeroplanes and big kitchens into ordinary homes.
1973
Farberware introduced the Convection Turbo Oven, which it calls the first countertop convection oven on the market. A fan and heater moved hot air around the food inside a small cabinet. You no longer needed the big kitchen oven for a small meal.
Why it mattered. It showed that a fan oven could be small enough to sit on a counter.
1989
1989 to 2000s (dates vary)
In 1989 the Japanese company Rinnai applied for a patent on an oven heated by bright halogen lamps. Through the 1990s and 2000s, round glass bowl ovens with a lamp and a fan in the lid were sold on TV shopping channels. Exactly who made the first one is unclear.
Why it mattered. They mixed glowing radiant heat with a fan, very like an air fryer in a glass bowl.
2002 – 2018
Scientists find that very brown starchy food contains a chemical called acrylamide, and governments ask everyone to cook to gold, not dark brown.
2002
24 April 2002
Swedish scientists studying a sealant leak in a railway tunnel found acrylamide, a chemical that may cause cancer, even in the blood of people who were never near the tunnel. They traced it to food. With the Swedish Food Agency, they announced that frying and baking starchy foods like potatoes forms acrylamide.
Why it mattered. It changed how the world thinks about very brown, crisp food.
2002
October 2002
Two teams reported in the journal Nature that acrylamide forms during the Maillard reaction. The key ingredient is asparagine, an amino acid found in potatoes and cereals, reacting with sugars at high heat. The browner the food, the more acrylamide it tends to hold.
Why it mattered. The same reaction that makes chips tasty can also make something harmful, so the colour you stop at matters.
2017
23 January 2017
In 2015 the European Food Safety Authority confirmed that acrylamide in food may raise cancer risk for people of all ages. The UK Food Standards Agency then launched a campaign with Olympic champion Denise Lewis. It told families to cook chips, roast potatoes and toast to a golden yellow, not dark brown.
Why it mattered. Golden, not burnt, became the target colour for anyone frying, baking or air frying.
2017
20 November 2017
The EU adopted Regulation 2017/2158, which from 11 April 2018 made food businesses take steps to keep acrylamide low. For French fries it set a benchmark level of 500 micrograms per kilogram. Kitchens were told to use colour guides and the right frying temperatures.
Why it mattered. Controlling heat and browning became a legal duty, not just good cooking.
2006 – 2019
Inventors shrink the fan oven into a small fryer-shaped box that crisps chips with little or no oil, and Philips takes it to the world.
2006
The French company Groupe SEB launched the Tefal ActiFry. A paddle slowly stirs the chips while hot air blows over them, and you add just one spoonful of oil. It is often called the first hot-air fryer sold to the public.
Why it mattered. It proved that people would buy a fryer that used air instead of a bath of oil.
2006
16 June 2006 (patent priority date)
Van der Weij, a Dutch inventor, was unhappy with a fat-free fryer he had bought, so he set out to crisp chips with hot air alone. His first prototype, made of wood and aluminium with a chicken-wire basket, was almost as big as a dog kennel. He patented his rapid air idea, with a shaped guide at the bottom that turns the air up through the food.
Why it mattered. He found a way to make fast-moving hot air do the job of hot oil in a small box.
2010
September 2010
After several more prototypes, van der Weij signed a deal with Philips. Philips showed its Airfryer at the IFA fair in Berlin, promising crispy fries with little or no added oil. It used what Philips called Rapid Air technology: a heater above the basket and a fast fan blowing hot air down and around the food.
Why it mattered. A big global brand turned one inventor's box into a new kind of kitchen appliance.
2012
30 October 2012
Van der Weij's US patent for an air guide was granted. Ribs at the bottom of the pan spread out from the middle and turn the hot air upward through the food. Philips calls this shape its starfish design, and says it helps food cook evenly.
Why it mattered. Guiding the air is the trick that lets a small fryer crisp food on all sides.
2017
by November 2017
Philips said it had sold more than 7 million Airfryers since the launch. Rival brands and cheaper copies were appearing everywhere. Celebrity chefs demonstrated air fryers on TV shopping channels and YouTube.
Why it mattered. The air fryer had become a whole product category, not just one gadget.
2020 – today
Lockdowns, rising energy bills and social media recipes turn the air fryer into a must-have, from the United States and Britain to India.
2020
2020 to 2021
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people stayed home and cooked more. The market researcher NPD counted 25.6 million air fryers sold in the US from January 2020 to December 2021, 76% more than in the two years before. About 36% of US households owned one in 2020.
Why it mattered. The air fryer went from a curious gadget to an everyday appliance.
2022
Autumn 2022
As energy bills soared, the market researcher GfK found UK air fryer sales in September 2022 were up 286% on a year before. A small box heats up faster and uses less electricity than a big oven for small meals. A survey that September found about 30% of UK households owned one.
Why it mattered. Saving energy became a new reason to own an air fryer, on top of using less oil.
2023
2021 to 2023
Philips sold its home appliance business, including the Airfryer, to the investment firm Hillhouse in 2021 for about 3.7 billion euros. In 2023 the business was renamed Versuni. It still sells air fryers under the Philips name.
Why it mattered. The Airfryer had become part of a business worth billions of euros.
2024
3 January 2024
Versuni opened a factory in Ahmedabad to make Philips Airfryers in India for the first time. It planned to start at 500,000 air fryers a year, with room to grow, and to create more than 1,000 jobs. In 2026 it added a line making air fryer motors at its Chennai plant.
Why it mattered. India had become big enough to build air fryers at home, not just buy them.
2025
The consulting firm Kearney estimated India's air fryer market at 600 to 700 crore rupees in 2025, growing 14 to 16% a year, and about 2.3 million were sold. People air fry paneer, kebabs and vegetables as well as chips. Amazon India said nearly 9 in 10 of its air fryer buyers were getting their first one.
Why it mattered. Air frying is spreading fast in one of the world's great frying cultures.
2026
March 2026
A survey in December 2025 found that 65% of UK households owned an air fryer, up from about 30% in 2022. Most owners use it several times a week. Food makers now test and print air fryer instructions on packets, next to oven times.
Why it mattered. In just a few years the air fryer joined the oven and microwave as a normal way to cook.
By the numbers
Surveys show air fryers going from about one in three British homes in 2022 to about two in three by the end of 2025.
By the numbers
In the United States, ownership nearly doubled in four years.
Did you know?
Fred van der Weij's first air fryer prototype was nearly as big as a dog kennel, built from wood and aluminium with a chicken-wire basket.
An air fryer does not fry at all: it is a small, powerful fan oven that blows hot air fast enough to dry and brown the surface of food.
In Which? tests, chips cooked in an air fryer used about 0.29 kWh of electricity, about a third of the 0.86 kWh used by an oven.
Acrylamide in food was found by accident, while Swedish scientists were studying people exposed to a sealant leak in a railway tunnel.
The word tempura probably comes from the Latin tempora, the Catholic fasting days when Portuguese cooks fried fish and vegetables instead of eating meat.
The people
234 – 149 BCE · Roman statesman and writer · Rome
Wrote down one of the oldest frying recipes we can still follow, honey-glazed globi.
1785 – 1850 · Doctor and chemist · England
Coined the word convection for heat carried by moving air or liquid.
1878 – 1936 · Doctor and chemist · France
Described the reaction of sugars and amino acids that turns food brown.
1898 – 1947 · Engineer and inventor · USA
Built the Whirlwind fan oven to heat frozen meals on aircraft.
1914 – 1996 · Chemist · USA
African American chemist who mapped the steps of the Maillard reaction in 1953.
Active from the 1980s · Environmental chemist · Sweden
Led the Stockholm University team that found acrylamide in fried and baked food.
c. 1962 – 2022 · Inventor · Netherlands
Invented the rapid air fryer that Philips launched as the Airfryer.
Living · Archaeobotanist · Egypt
Recreated the fried tiger nut cakes shown in an ancient Egyptian tomb.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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