Cooking on a Vintage Stove
One can only imaging what it must have been like to cook in a vintage home before the invention of the cooking stove. Preparing meals over an open fire could have been no picnic.
The innovations in the cooking stove during the nineteenth century were some of the most needed, and most welcomed.
In addition to the hazards that come with cooking over a fire burned meat, and underdone cakes were just a few of the nuisances that can come from cooking over unregulated fires.
The wood and coal burning stove took the cook out of the fireplace. She was now able to cook and heat a home using less fuel than the with just using the fireplace.
But these new innovative stoves still needed great care in the use and upkeep. With the checking of dampers and flues and keeping an eye on the cinders so that they didn’t go out cooking with a wood stove was still time consuming. Not to mention the cleaning of such a stove which involved removing of ashes and the “blacking” which was to keep it from rusting.
When gas and electricity came on the scene homemaking became a bit more bearable and less hazardous. Women could turn on one burner to heat up a pot instead of an entire wood or coal stove. There were no dangerous leaping flames to tempt children and destroy clothing.
This quote from The Library of Cookery Vol. 1 explains a few of the differences..
At the beginning of the cooking, the article that is being broiled should be turned often; then, as soon as the outside is browned, the heat should be reduced if possible, as with a gas stove, and the article allowed to cook until done. If the broiling is done over coals, it is necessary to continue the turning during the entire process.
Because gas is so easily handled, good results can be obtained by those who have had very little experience in using it, and with study and practice results become uniform and gas proves to be an economical fuel.
Antique wood burning stoves can still be found in many homes both trying to achieve the antique style and those who appreciate the warmth from a wood burning stove.
