KitchenAid 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 qt, spouts

It depends what you use bowls for, and it makes this a specialized set. Every other three-piece set on this shelf includes something around a quart — Pyrex Essentials 1 qt, Glad 1.2, Pyrex Colors 1.3, Cuisinart and OXO 1.5 — because that is the size for an egg wash, a dressing, a cup of chopped herbs. KitchenAid starts at 2.5 qt, which is where several of those sets *end*. What you get instead is three usable baking bowls: 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5 quarts are all big enough to beat a cake batter in without it climbing out, which no other three-piece set here can say. If you want both ranges, COOK WITH COLOR runs from 0.32 to 5.8 qt in one box for $26.99.

Because only three of the thirteen sets here have a spout at all, and all three are plastic. KitchenAid publishes "each bowl features a pour spout", Glad goes further with "a pour spout on one end and a lip on the other end", and OXO has a "wide grip and spout". None of the six stainless sets or the two Pyrex glass sets has one — for a mechanical reason: a spout is molded in, and you cannot easily press one into a pressed steel bowl or form one in tempered glass. What a spout saves is the thing that happens when you tip a bowl of batter over a tin without one: it runs down the outside of the bowl and onto the worktop.

The listing does not say, which is the omission. Five of the thirteen sets on this shelf are plastic, and only COOK WITH COLOR names the polymer — "BPA free durable polypropylene". That matters because polypropylene is the right plastic for a bowl: non-porous, so it takes up no smell; tough at room temperature; and it tolerates dishwasher heat better than alternatives. KitchenAid says only "plastic", and does not claim microwave or freezer safety either, where Zulay and COOK WITH COLOR claim both. The practical consequence is that this is a mixing set rather than a storage set — which is consistent with it having no lids, where six sets here do.