[When I was a kid, in the 1970s, my mother LOVED her pressure cooker. She raved about it. Strangely, when we moved to South Africa we never again used a pressure cooker despite it being around. However, with the electricity problems, I got myself a gas hotplate for my cooking and that's when my thoughts turned to the pressure cooker since I was trying to figure out what I could use in place of a microwave. I loved my microwave. So I bought a very cheap pressure cooker. I reckon a pressure cooker is BETTER than a microwave and cooks much faster. So I'm a huge fan of pressure cookers myself. You'll find that about 90% of all inventions in modern times come from these 3 countries: Germany, France and Britain. The pressure cooker is a French invention. Can you believe that pressure cookers were invented BEFORE Napoleon was born? The pressure cooker existed before Frederick the Great was born! The Pressure cooker existed before America existed!!! The humble pressure cooker … some brilliant White science you take for granted! As always, brought to you by the European people! Jan]

From an encyclopedia:

Pressure cooker, hermetically sealed pot which produces steam heat to cook food quickly. The pressure cooker first appeared in 1679 as Papin’s Digester, named for its inventor, French-born physicist Denis Papin. The cooker heats water to produce very hot steam which forces the temperature inside the pot as high as 266 °F (130 °C), significantly higher than the maximum heat possible in an ordinary saucepan. The higher temperature of a pressure cooker penetrates food quickly, reducing cooking time without diminishing vitamin and mineral content.

Pressure cookers are especially useful at high altitudes, where they alleviate the problem of low temperature boiling caused by reduced atmospheric pressure.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/boiling-cooking