OXO 1.5, 3, 5 qt, spout and base

This is the clearest material comparison on the shelf, because the capacities match exactly. OXO, plastic — 1.5, 3, 5 qt — $29.95. Cuisinart, stainless — 1.5, 3, 5 qt — $38.99. What plastic gives you here is the pour spout and the non-slip base — neither of which any of the six stainless sets offers in the same form, because a spout is molded and steel is pressed. What steel gives you is that it never stains and never holds a smell, and Cuisinart adds freezer and refrigerator safety. Neither goes in a microwave: only the two Pyrex glass sets and two plastic sets claim that. For mixing, the plastic; for mixing and storing, the steel.

The second hand. Three sets here have a pour spout — this, KitchenAid and Glad — and the spout only solves half the problem: it gives the batter somewhere to leave, and you still have to tip a five-quart bowl accurately. OXO forms the rim into a "wide grip", so there is a defined place to hold on the far side. Glad solves the same thing differently, with "a pour spout on one end and a lip on the other end". Without either, you are holding a smooth curved wall with wet hands and aiming by feel, which is how batter ends up down the outside of the bowl and across the worktop.

For almost anything a home kitchen does, yes. A standard two-layer cake batter wants 4 to 5 quarts so the beaters can work without it climbing out; bread dough for two loaves fits; a salad for eight fits. Only COOK WITH COLOR goes larger on this shelf, at 5.8 qt, and it also reaches down to 0.32 qt where OXO stops at 1.5. The sets that fall short at the top are Pyrex Essentials at 2.5 qt — a prep set rather than a baking set — and the sets that fall short at the bottom are KitchenAid, which starts at 2.5 and has nothing for an egg wash. OXO’s 1.5, 3 and 5 is the conventional spread, and it is conventional because it works.