CHAPTER VI
COOKING BY ELECTRIC CURRENT
The electric stove is the most dependent on geography of all your kitchen implements. Because it consumes a large amount of electricity, the rate of this as a fuel will decide whether or not you can use the electricity-consuming stove. This decision, in turn, is affected by the rate of electricity for cooking in every different locality in the country.
The vogue of the electric stove is due to the convenience and sureness with which the cooking is done, the control which may be exercised and the positiveness of results. Furthermore, the cleanliness, lack of odors and gases, and the easy installation and convenience of placing are other important reasons why the electric stove has come to stay, if electric companies co-operate with the stove companies to give a cooking rate.
Its vogue, too, is largely due from the fact that in the maidless home housekeepers find electricity simpler, cooler and cleaner, if more expensive and not quite as rapid as gas.
POINTS ABOUT THE STOVES
As with the gas and wood stove, the main principles must apply in picking them out, with but few additions and omissions. The electric stove is not bothered with its own deterioration by the combustion inside it of oils, woods, coals, cokes, etc., but has, of course, to be well wired, rust protected and insulated against mishap and fire. Accidents are contingent on anything that uses any fuel. With electric stoves it is unnecessary to have large or small storage systems, which makes electricity a convenient fuel for the small “rabbit hutches,” in which the wealthiest and poorest are forced to live in these days of homelessness.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Estate Stove Co._
THREE LITTLE FINGERS FIT IN THREE LITTLE HOLES AND THE CONNECTION IS MADE]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Bramhall Deane Co._
HERE THE STOVE LID IS SET ON A LITTLE ROUND PLATFORM ALREADY ATTACHED AND EASILY DISENGAGED
ELECTRIC RANGE]
Then again, if you employ electricity, whether it is more costly or not, you do not have to put in so strenuous a flue system when building a house, but just a hood over the stove as a vent to carry off cooking odors and a special wiring system. You do away, too, with the draughts necessary for coal or wood types and all the contingent engineering niceties, which harass and wear you if they are not perfection.
The body of the stove should be built of non-rusting iron. Armco rust-resisting iron is often used in the best grades of stoves. It is free from impurities which invite corrosion and rust and has proved a valuable material out of which to make a good stove body. On some stoves the tops are made of gray iron castings which, with the black body and its polished iron trimmings, make a very stately and harmonious article without sacrificing anything of practical utility.
The top of any stove is the place upon which are placed the utensils for frying, boiling, etc. This is true whether the fuel be coal, gas, electricity or what-not.
The top of the electric stove is no variant to this rule. It has the spots upon which to place the utensils and these spots are called the heating units. Heat, of course, is communicated in varying degrees between the units. These units are of cast or wrought iron. The tops of any electric stove must be of cast iron or some such non-warping rigid material which takes readily to cleaning. The heating element should be safe from molestations and the top of the stove must be smoothness itself to hold the utensils with perfect ease and steadiness. The units’ wire connection must be enclosed to protect the heating element. The top of the usual electric stove has about four cooking “holes” or plates, or heating elements. In some cases the electric connection is made by the heating units being equipped with pluglike sets or fingers (as your ordinary lamp plug) and fitting into a socket under itself. In other cases, if it be a three-heat stove, the three wires are directly connected with the heating element and all that has to be done in case of bad connection is to raise the heating element and unscrew the wires. In other styles when bad connection occurs you must search the surface beneath the plug, a little more complicated operation, but still the manufacturers of this feel that it is an added protection to wiring.
The surface units, too, must come off easily so that no extra tool is needed to pick them up.
OVENS AND BROILERS
There are two kinds of ovens used in the electric stove, from the point of view of heat retention. One of them does not retain the heat completely enough to call itself a fireless cooker oven yet does retain heat to a great degree and cooks well after a little time on the third heat or low heat. The other style guarantees a fireless system of cooking when the electricity is cut off.
Strange as it may seem, the largest and most elaborate and the most expensive stoves are not made with the retention-heat method because, no doubt, the persons that can pay about $1000 or even $700 for a stove have chefs and don’t really care whether they use more or less electricity.
For ordinary use, however, and for the large stove which costs to-day around $140 to $225, it is well to have the retained-heat oven, the oven so insulated as to keep in the heat and keep out the cold, so that you can cook easily by fireless and save much electricity.
The oven should be equipped with top and floor heating units. These should be controlled by a three-heat switch and so geared and wired as to be accessible. If one unit burns out the others will not.
In some stoves the heating unit in the top of the bake oven is controlled by the same switch which operates the units in the oven bottom and is of proper intensity to insure good results.
Often this same unit also serves the broiler. In other cases the broiler is supplied by an “on and off” switch alone and it is only made in conjunction with the broiler. In still other stoves the three-heat broiler with separate switch is employed.
The broiler must be heavily tinned to prevent rust and corrosion and it must have a removable drip pan. In one stove on the market, which has the broiler to the left on the top, the drip pan is fastened to the broiler so that when it is drawn out over the stove for any reason the drippings are caught by the pan and not spattered on the stove top beneath. This is a minor perfection but a very nice one.
Some range companies make a unit of a certain size, say “24” or “48,” and if you want a larger size you can simply say “I want two units”--or three, or what not. There are small stoves for yachts and kitchenettes; in fact, the electric stove is as adaptable as a telescope, some have ovens above, some have ovens below, some have broilers above, some below. Some have everything above, some everything below. You can have exactly what you want as to price and style. Some stoves are also equipped with practical plate and food warmers.
One very pleasing stove is called a period stove because it has legs that curve and cavort like a period bit of furniture--what period we couldn’t say unless it be early Edison.
Then, too, there are combination coal and electric ranges, for there are those persons who must have both--and as they are beautifully combined they make a neat and effective unit in the kitchen.
There are portable stoves and stoves that are built-in; that is, the stove that can be very simply moved from place to place if necessary, and the one that is backed into the wall and would leave a scar if it were moved. Of course the huge stoves are of the built-in type, but they, too, come with legs and are better adapted to removal.
ELECTRIC MEASUREMENTS
For these electric stoves, special wiring must be effected. They cannot be attached to the ordinary electric socket. It is necessary when ordering a stove to give the voltage of your electric supply. The stoves are usually prepared for 110 volts with two-wire service from street or 110-220 volts with three-wire service. In some stoves the cut-out box is built on the range directly back of the switches. This, then, can be easily opened if anything happens. In the stock stove an extra charge is made for voltage exceeding 220 or less than 110, because alterations have to be made.
The consumption of watts in the electric stove is a very vital question. Watts are the unit of electric power, just as you speak of 50 cubic feet of gas in measuring gas consumption. The unit of figuring the cost is not on the watt--because a watt is too small a figure but of the unit of one thousand watts, which is the kilowatt. So you call the unit of fuel consumption the kilowatt hour and you say the average stove consumes about one kilowatt hour per person per day. If a burner consumes 800 watts it means you will be charged ⁸⁰⁰⁄₁₀₀₀ of a kilowatt per hour.
According to the size of heating elements, the wattage of stoves runs from 10,000 watts or 10 kilowatts (which is the same thing) to about 2500 watts, or 2¹⁄₂ kilowatts on a small three-heating-unit range. This gives its total capacity if everything goes at once.
It is a little more intelligent for the housewife to read her meter than not to. So here is how it is done: There are four little dials, which you read from right to left, the opposite manner of reading this page. The first dial measures the tens, the second the hundreds, the third the thousands, the fourth the ten thousands. Therefore, the total is found by adding all the figures at which the dials point and always reading the lowest number which the dial approximates. But you must always substract your last month’s record from this, of course, to get this month’s average; and this amount multiplied by your electricity rate would give you what your bill should be.
After all, the cost is the paramount thing in your purchasing and calculations as to purchasing. The electric stove is, on the whole, more expensive than the ordinary cook stove. The fuel cost varies, as has been said before, with the locality in which you happen to live.
In many places the electric companies have made a cooking rate much lower than the lighting rate. In such localities where the electricity is but from 1¹⁄₂ to 2 cents, the electricity as fuel is almost equal in cost to gas at one dollar. It has been generally admitted that, with care as to fuel consumption, a kilowatt hour per day is consumed by each individual in the house. If you have to pay three cents per kilowatt hour and you have six persons in the house, your electricity will cost you about eighteen cents per day. In the large, weighty and “watty” stoves the consumption of electricity is about 2 kilowatt-hours per day per person, but on the stock ranges not weighing over 300 pounds with a comparative low wattage (compared with the 1200-pound made-to-order range) the average is, as was said before, but one kilowatt-hour per person per day. One firm, computing 4.2 persons to average a family, states that in the use of 26,180 ranges the cost was $4.06¹⁄₄ per month per family.
The value of electric cooking is not in the low cost of fuel but in the saving of labor, food conservation, cleanliness, comfort and mental or psychological delight in the shipshape and orderly method.
In cities where the cooking rate is the same as the lighting rate (around seven cents) cooking by electricity is expensive for the average folk who have to think a little about the cost of living.
It has been said that electric cooking is expensive because it takes longer to cook by it than by gas. This is being overcome in three ways: first, by the proper use of electricity and the turning it off and cooking on retained heat; secondly, by the better made stove in use to-day; thirdly, by the use of proper sized and shaped utensils which are a very great factor in the rapidity of cooking and thence economy of electricity as a fuel.
CONTROL AND TRIMMINGS
Most stoves are equipped with reliable thermometers and also many give charts with the stove to show you exactly what temperatures on that
## particular stove will accomplish the pop-over, the roast, or the
what-not. This eliminates any basis of error. Some, too, have glass ovens which further add to the gaiety of rations.
In buying, buy of the best firms, get guarantees, see that your wiring is adequate and that everything is well insulated with asbestos or something of equal value.
See to it that your oven doors close without slamming; that when they are open they won’t bend if a weight is put on them. We have seen one stove stand the weight of a man jumping on the stove oven door when it was lowered. Many a good cake has been ruined by banging oven doors.
The switches should be conveniently placed and not off in some corner. The fuses should be back-side or back of range, as they are not
## particularly beautiful to gaze upon and one is apt to take them for
switches when rushed. But few stoves now put the fuses in the front. The fuses should be so connected that if one blows out all do not.
There is a stove on the market at present that has a fireless cooking timing device, so that when you go to bed, you can have your breakfast all cooked for you (if you have stocked the stove before retiring) at any time in the morning at which you have set the clock. This you may consider a trimming, but it is a nice bit of modern life’s embroidery.
In most of the stoves the fireless cooking saves time and saves your food. Basting is unnecessary; you get what you pay for in weight of the roast and lose less than by any other process of cookery. In some stoves twelve or fifteen minutes of electricity are all that is needed; stored heat then does the work.
DIMENSIONS AND CARE
The heights in stoves vary from a few inches (table ranges) to about 5′. Height to cooking top varies, too; the nearest it comes to 38″ the more comfortable, of course. The new stoves are being made with special emphasis on the height of cooking surfaces.
The depth of stoves also varies, from the built-to-order stove which is 33″ to the stock stoves which run even as narrow as 16″, with but three top cooking or heating units instead of the average four.
As with all new devices, you must practise with the electric stove to get the best results. The first few weeks you may think you are using too much current. You will be, too, but you will learn better if you take the following into your mind:
1. Do not overheat your oven. Never let the temperature exceed the thermometer’s tell-tale face.
2. Oil your oven occasionally as you would your typewriter or sewing-machine, for some “non-rusting” ovens go back on you.
3. Not only engineers but cooks often sleep at the switch. But you mustn’t. It would be wise to have a master switch in the kitchen connecting the range to the electric supply. In this case you can turn off the electricity and there will be no danger of leaving a burner turned on when not needed. The heating plate may crack if the current is turned on without anything cooking in a utensil on top of it.
4. Don’t remove burners unless repair is necessary. Boiling over of foods won’t hurt the burners. Use nothing but a light non-metallic brush to rid the burners of spillings. If you use old utensils that have become rich in food deposits, thoroughly scour before using on the electric stove. The electric stove makes no deposit on utensils.
5. Turn down the burner when water boils. You have three heats. Turn from high to low at boil. Your bills will come down 75%. Use as little water as possible and by keeping the lids on you will cook by steam. Turn your switches to low at every chance you get. Ten or fifteen minutes before the food is cooked you can turn off current; there will be enough heat to cook with if your utensil is covered.
6. When cooking roasts, in about an hour, depending on the size of your roast, you can turn off full current on the top burner and cook on retained heat or on medium heat of bottom burner.
7. For safety in expense keep one burner on at Full. Start your cookery of each thing on Full and then shift to medium burners. This will save electric bills, as you won’t have all your burners going full tilt at the same time.
8. Flat bottom utensils at least as large as the heating space are necessary to the economical use of the electric stove. Use as little water as possible, thereby cooking by steam and saving food. Shallow vessels take less heat and therefore less electricity.
A VERY NEW DEPARTURE
On the market, as this goes to press has come the electric stove which, instead of heating by radiant heat (red), cooks by conductivity or black heat. That is, the unit becomes hot throughout and does not burn by becoming red hot. It is claimed in this case that the unit wears longer and that it takes less time to cook therefore less electricity. We have not had time to test this stove so cannot vouch for it except that it is made by very eminent manufacturers and invented by a very distinguished expert.
It is so built that the cleaning of it and the replacing of its parts is done with the minimum effort.
All switches and connections are at the back of the stove and can therefore be kept inviolate.
The top burner elements are made of multiple low temperature units from one ampere in a single unit to almost unlimited amperage of say 25 amperes, from 25 single units in parallel within a square or diameter of 8 or 9 inches. Think what flexibility of heat this means! It is just what up to date the electric stove has lacked with its but one to three “heats.” If one or more units burn out then there are others left!
The stove is so geared that a fluctuation of 25 volts will make no trouble!
The oven arrangement and unit system are so arranged as to bake quicker and adjustable to different size pans.
Ideal broiling is a thing quite boasted of in this stove.
All the units and parts are easily removable for cleaning so you will get a prize if all the things they say of their stove are true and we have little doubt that they are true.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Bramhall Deane Co._
HOOD AND STOVE HEATED BY GAS AND WOOD. NOTE THE MARBLE-TOPPED TABLES]
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