To his already extensive list of gas cooking apparatus, Mr Fletcher,
Warrington, has just added what he calls his ‘Large Cottage Cooker,’
which is simply a Gas cooking-stove in the cheapest and simplest
form to be effective. For two pounds may be had a good roasting, and
a fairly good pastry and bread oven, with a reversible boiler and
grillers on the top. The body of the stove is made of galvanised iron,
and the shelves are wrought iron. The height of the whole is thirty
inches; space inside the oven twelve by twelve by sixteen inches.
When we consider their convenience to housekeepers and the time which
they save, we do not wonder that the use of such stoves is rapidly
extending. The equable nature of the heat insures good cookery; a
pot or kettle may be boiled on the burner in a few minutes, and the
housewife may be kept quite easy as to the state of her kitchen fire
for cooking purposes. In fact, in summer the kitchen fire may be
dispensed with altogether. There is no smoke or ashes; pans and kettles
are easier kept clean, and all this is done at but a trifling expense
for gas—say one penny per hour for a medium stove. A potato steamer
will be found a useful adjunct to the stove. By its aid, the potatoes,
after being boiled, are finished off with steam in the upper part of
the same vessel; and will be found drier and mealier than if cooked in
an ordinary pot in the old way.