In the average household the use of a cooking box does not do away
entirely with the smoke, soot, heat, ashes, and kitchen odors, because
of the need of heating the food on a stove for five minutes to half an
hour before it is put into the air-tight box. The use of gas-stoves
does away with most of these nuisances, while electricity abolishes
them altogether, besides removing the danger of fire, keeping the air
clean and cool, and enabling one to cook in any part of the house at
any desired minute.
Electric cooking is still in its infancy, but the child is growing
rapidly. At the Chicago Exposition of 1893 utensils were shown in
considerable variety--chafing-dishes, stew-pans, coffee-pots, teapots,
broilers, griddles, etc. Since that time hundreds of thousands of
dollars have been spent in devising improvements, and at the electric
exhibition in New York in 1911 the cooking-utensils were so prominent
and boasted so many improvements that it seemed as though the time had
come for their general introduction into homes and hotels.
The United States Government has taken the lead by recommending
electric ranges for future use on battleships, after experiments had
been made showing that the change would result in greater economy of
time, space, and money, not to speak of cleanliness, or of the better
quality of the cooked food, because of the uniform distribution of the
heat.
For home use, electricity is still in most localities comparatively
expensive, but it will be less so when it comes into more general use.
If the electric companies would more frequently follow the example of
the gas companies in renting cooking-ranges, it would be a great stride
forward. In England some of the companies charge a special low rate for
electric cooking, because it is done mostly in the day time, when there
is little demand for the current for lighting purposes.
But the most radical way to reduce the cost is to combine the electric
range with the fireless cooker. Thousands of families that can not pay
for an electric current five or six hours a day could easily afford one
for the fifteen minutes necessary for heating the food before it is
put into the box, besides the few minutes needed for crisping roasts,
brewing coffee, or toasting bread.
In 1911, fancying myself a prophet of great things to happen, I wrote:
"It is quite likely that the electric range can be so constructed in
part that no separate cooking-box will be needed; and then the culinary
millennium."
The "Edison Monthly" reprinted my remarks and in an editorial promptly
informed me that what I had voiced as a mere possibility for the future
was already a fact: that electric fireless cookers had been put out by
several manufacturers more than a year before my article appeared. It
was a pleasant surprise to find that this was literally true; that my
imagined "millennium cookers" were actually in the market.
In Chicago, on September 15, 1910, the following menu was served to
nineteen persons in an electric shop:
Consomme Julienne
Radishes Olives Celery
Prime Roast Beef
Mashed Potatoes Lima Beans
Combination Salad
Fresh Peach Short Cake
Coffee
This meal was cooked in two hours; and by using high heat only so long
as necessary (on the "cooker" principle) and then turning down the
electric current the cost was made as low as only a trifle over a cent
and a quarter per person.
For dishes requiring only a short time to prepare, the following
details have been given:
"A toaster can be used for fifteen minutes at a cost of 1¼ cents;
fried oysters with bacon, prepared in the blazer of an electric stove
consumes 2 cents' worth of current; to prepare creamed oysters costs 1¾
cents; finnan haddie, 2 cents; lobster à la Newburg, 2 cents; chicken
and mushrooms, 2½ cents; spring chicken, 2½ cents; lamb chops with
vegetables, 2½ cents; sweetbreads, 2½ cents; plain omelet, 1¾ cents;
cheese omelet, 2 cents; Spanish omelet, 2¼ cents. To boil eggs the
water-cup may be used on the dining-room table and one cup of water can
be boiled for 1½ cents; Welsh rarebit may be made for 1½ cents; griddle
cakes baked on the electric stove for 2½ cents for 1½ hours' operation."
West London in the autumn of 1912 had two private restaurants in which
all the cooking was done by electricity, 1,200 meals being provided
daily for the staff of a large establishment.
In the London "Daily Mail" of November 2, 1912, the following appeared:
An interesting test made in a small middle-class home gives
the entire cost of the day's cooking at 6d. Beginning first
thing in the morning, the time and amount of electricity used
were carefully noted. For early morning tea the boiler or
kettle of the electric range boiled rather more than two pints
of water in four minutes, the electricity used equaling less
than one-fifth of a penny. The whole cooking of the breakfast
took ten minutes, the electricity used being less than 7-10th
of a unit, equaling an expenditure of just under ¾d. The
menu was five rashers of bacon and toast cooked on the grill
in less than seven minutes, five eggs boiled on a ring, and
coffee made from the rapid boiler.
The midday meat meal consisted of an 8 lb. joint, potatoes, and other
vegetables for five people, milk pudding, and coffee. The electric oven
retains the heat so well that the pudding was placed in the oven after
the joint was removed and the electricity switched off, the retained
heat being sufficient to cook it; 2¾ units, or 2¾d., cooked this meal.
Tea time cost ½d. for tea, hot grill cakes, and toast, and
supper with a hot dish 1d. During the day water was boiled,
cakes baked, and some soup simmered, at the cost of another
unit.
The advance of the electric cooker can be gauged by the
statement of the electric supply companies, who affirm that
where they had but six private houses using cookers last
Christmas they have 200 this year; or by the statements of
the users, who say that they have no desire to return to old
methods. Many big business houses have complete electric
installations in their kitchens.
Electricity in the kitchen will make cooking an _exact science_.
No longer will diners be obliged to rely on the cook's "instinct"
or "knack," which too often fail. With the electric appliances the
temperature can be controlled to a degree, and special switches permit
fast, medium, or slow rates of cooking.
From the economic point of view the most satisfactory electric ranges
are of course those in which the current shuts off automatically, while
the dinner continues to cook with no further expense, the stove taking
on the fireless cooker principle.
Further advantages claimed for electric cooking are that the loss of
weight in meat while cooking is greatly reduced, and that the results
obtained by it have the advantages of the paper-bag cooking, which has
come so much into use within a few years because of its cleanliness and
its value in preserving the food flavors which in ordinary cooking are
so lamentably dissipated.
Electric chafing dishes, toasters of various kinds, coffee percolators
and tea kettles, waffle irons, boilers, stew and frying pans, are now
at the service of all who have electricity in the house. Nor is this
all. There are, besides, bread and cake mixers, coffee grinders, food
choppers, ice cream freezers, egg beaters, vegetable slicers, food
graters, apple peelers, knife sharpeners and polishers--all of them run
by the electric current.
Thus we see that the housewife and the cook of the future, instead of
feeling like a drudge in a smoky, smelly, overheated kitchen, will have
the dignity of workers in a cool, clean laboratory for the scientific
preparation of savory food and the abolition of dyspepsia.
The editor of the electric magazine referred to indicates another
important result of this agreeable transformation of the kitchen. Caste
feeling is largely a matter of dress. "The poorest stenographer is a
lady, because, in so far as her stipend permits, she dresses like a
lady. Accordingly, she looks down upon the cook drawing the same wages
and 'keep,' because the cook works with red face and streaming hair
over a hot stove." But in the electric kitchen of the future the cook
will be able to be as neatly dressed as if she were presiding over a
glove counter; and this will act as a great social leveler.
The cook's work will also be lightened by the growing practice of
preparing food and drink on the dining-room table, to have it hot, and
with the flavor at its best. The choicest coffee, for instance, is
usually spoiled by being prepared carelessly in the kitchen. Epicures
make their own coffee and tea; they are also able now to have better
toast than ever comes from the kitchen by making it on the table in
an electric toaster. Eggs and bacon, taken sizzling from the electric
frying stove and eaten out of the pan, have a richness of flavor that
will astonish those who have never tried them this way; and the same is
true of many other breakfast and lunch dishes.