pressure cooker

• pressure-cooker

pressure cooker (plural pressure cookers)

1. (cooking) A sealed cooking vessel that allows cooking in greater than atmospheric pressure and at a temperature above the boiling point of water.
2. (figurative) A stressful situation that is liable to erupt.
   • 2006, J. P. Cardone, Tales Under a Full Moon, page 208:

     Look, I had a pressure cooker of a job along with more responsibility that any one person should have. I had an office of twenty-five people under me all needing help like little birds in a nest.

   • 2007 July 19, Leslie Feinberg, “Cuba education about same-sex love reached every home”, in Workers World‎:

     Wall Street hopes that economic deprivation will turn up the pressure cooker on internal relations.

   • 2011, Augusto Cury, The Dreamseller: The Calling, page 173:

     Humanity lives in a pressure cooker of stress because of the ruthless way in which we compete, because of our lack of respect for the international rules of commerce, because of social conflicts, because of the devastation to the environment.