II
When planning out the bills of fare the cook must use more brains and less gas.
For instance, let us say that she wants to serve hashed mutton (and Heaven help that it may not be that grey and slimy mass endured in too many an English home!), potatoes, Brussels-sprouts, milk pudding, and stewed fruit.
Let her heat the oven and cook the mutton in a casserole. The potatoes and sprouts can cook in the oven just as well as over a boiling tap, the milk pudding is baked, and the fruit baked in a covered casserole. Managing thus, all the dishes are cooked in the oven.
Then there will come a day when the oven need not be used at all, and the meal be cooked on the top of the stove. After all, cooking is carried out by heat, and it matters little in most cases if the heat surrounds the pan as in the oven, or is kept directly under it as by a tap.
Every oven should be supplied with a solid browning shelf, not a thing with holes in it. This can be placed where needed, and by its use the part of the oven above it can be kept 100 degrees cooler than that which is below.
PLATE XXXIX
AN ELECTRIC COOKER (OVENS, HOT-PLATE, GRILL, PLATE HEATER) FOR A LARGE HOUSEHOLD
(Messrs. Crompton & Co.)
The Cost of Cooking by Gas.
A moderate-sized oven, such as would be needed in a household of not over eight persons, burns about 30 feet of gas per hour when full on. Of that, 10 feet will be required to heat the oven, allowing twenty minutes for that operation. Then the gas should be turned down so that it burns at the rate of 15 feet per hour. Ten minutes later it is turned down again and consumes 10 feet. Thus if you use the oven for one and a half hours it should consume 22½ feet of gas.
In the oven you should find two open grid shelves, a solid shelf, and a drip tin. The drip tin must be kept at the bottom of the stove below the gas flames. The dripping falls into this and does not become brown as it would do if the tin was placed over the flames. The drip tin must be kept in its place, as otherwise too much air would enter from beneath the oven and stop the cooking.
If, instead of hanging the meat from a hook in the oven, it is baked on a tin, use a double baking tin.
When roasting or baking meat, use the upper grid shelf for pastry, and place milk pudding or some other food needing slow cooking above the solid shelf, and then make the very best use of your oven while it is hot. See "Cooking Mornings," p. [127].
The temperature of the oven to begin with, for most cakes, should be 280 degrees, for meat 300 degrees, for pastry and bread 340 degrees. An oven thermometer can be procured, and is a great help to inexperienced cooks. Quartern loaves take some three-quarters of an hour to bake, and use about 25 feet of gas.
Large boiling burners, full on, eat about 24 feet of gas per hour. In using boiling burners there is often great waste, as people will turn them full on and have the flames flaring up the sides of the pan, which is a waste of heat and causes a smell of gas. The flame should be kept right underneath the pan or kettle.
The simmering taps consume about 8 feet of gas per hour, and a clever person will, by using a three or four-tier pan, cook several dishes at the cost of about 16 feet of gas per hour, allowing for heating over a boiling tap at first and then simmering for the remainder of the time.
The griller uses as much gas as the oven per hour; but then, of course, grilling is a quick operation. When using the grill, make it red-hot and see that the grill pan is under, and getting hot at the same time. The grill is used for toasting, and if you turn over the toasted side of bread on to a cold surface, it makes it tough.
When the grill is hot, turn the gas down and watch the toast very carefully, as it cooks very quickly. Always keep a large pan or kettle of water over the griller, as it helps to throw down the heat. Do not boil the kettle on a boiling tap and use the griller for toast, but cook over the griller as well as under it; and this applies when grilling chops, steak, bacon, sausages, etc., for the saucepans can heat over the griller as well as over a tap.
On a modern stove, the grill is arranged so that half of it may be lighted at a time for grilling small things. When grilling meat or fish, cook with full heat for two minutes in order to seal the pores and conserve the good of the food, then reduce the heat, turn, increase the heat, and decrease again.
Thin steak needs about 12 minutes' cooking; thicker, 12 to 20 minutes; chops, 10 to 12 minutes; cutlets, 6 minutes; and bacon 1 or 2 minutes.
Pancakes can be cooked by means of the griller first over the grill and then by placing the pan under it, and omelettes can be made in the same way without turning them.
If the oven is not in use, milk puddings, macaroni cheese, etc., may be cooked on a boiling tap and browned under the griller.
PLATE XL
AN ELECTRIC KITCHEN IN A PRIVATE HOUSE
Above each switch is a red lamp, which reminds the cook that the current is on.
(The British Electric Transformer Co.)
Utensils for Gas Cookers.
It is most important when cooking by gas to choose the right kind of utensils. They should be thin and wide, rather than deep. A deep kettle takes longer to boil and therefore costs more to boil than a shallow one.
Block tin, enamel ware and earthenware casseroles and fireproof china should be used; the two latter whenever possible, because by cooking and serving in one dish you save labour in washing up and generally have the food served hotter. Also food cooked in earthenware tastes better than that cooked in metal pans.
Both cooker and utensils must be kept clean, for dirt, especially soot, is a non-conductor of heat. They must also be dry. I have seen cooks rinse out a pan and put it on the gas wet, forgetting that heat is then wasted in drying the moisture on the outside of the pan.
In the same way they will boil one quart of water when they only need a pint, and waste gas in that way.
PLATE XLI
THE "BABY FIRE" IN AN ALTERED POSITION IS NOW USED TO BOIL A KETTLE AND HEAT AN IRON.
(The British Electric Transformer Co.)
PLATE XLIa
THE "BABY FIRE"
A delightful invention for heating small rooms
(The British Electric Transformer Co.)
To Clean a Gas Stove.
A gas cooker is easily cleaned, and should be well washed with hot water and a little soda, loose parts and oven too. Grease should be rubbed off with newspaper as quickly as possible. The black part of the stove is cleaned with enameline and the bright steel with very fine emery-paper and oil, and then polished with a soft rag, or if plated with a leather only.
The best kind of stove is mounted as high as possible so that it may be cleaned underneath. Also it should be set high to avoid fatigue in bending and lifting when using the oven, but not so high that the cook cannot use the hot plate comfortably.
Be sure that no taps are clogged with grease, and remember that when a gas stove smells it is because it is dirty or because the gas is turned on too full and is not being properly consumed, or gas is escaping. Well-managed gas cookers do not smell.
Now and then something may go wrong outside the cook's control, and then the Gas Company must send some one to put it right.
But when cookers are intelligently used they seldom need attention, and if it should become necessary to change them, they are moved without much trouble or any structural work or dirt-making.
The Destruction of Rubbish.
In a household where coal and coke are not used, and in places where the unsanitary habit of collecting refuse but once a week prevails, the careful housewife will ask, what am I to do with the rubbish? I could burn some of it in a coal range, and most of it in a coke furnace, but if I employ gas only, what is to become of it?
The only thing then is to add a gas refuse destructor to your apparatus. In one household known to me (a London flat) there is a gas cooker, water circulator, stove for warming the kitchen when the cooker is not in use, and the neatest little rubbish destructor—all fitted into a surprisingly small space.
Warming the Kitchen.
The mere word "kitchen" suggests warmth, but the mistress who uses gas must not forget that when the cooker is not in use (which may often be from 1.30 to 6 or 6.30 in the evening, except for the boiling of a kettle), and if the circulator is also turned out, the kitchen would probably be too cold for the maids to sit in. When there is a servants' hall this does not matter; but if the kitchen is also the sitting-room, a small gas fire should be supplied.
Slot Meters.
In order to cater for people of small income whom it suits to pay for the gas they consume in small sums, and also in some cases to check the consumption of gas, slot meters have been introduced. No charge is made for the meter, for the piping of the house or for the stove, but in order to cover this more is charged for the gas. It may still be sold at a nominal 3s. per 1000 feet (the price of gas varies in various localities), but the person using a penny-slot meter obtains less gas for a penny than he would do did he not require a meter. The same applies to the "shilling-in-the-slot" meter. Small users, however, often find it convenient to use slot meters, which entails no first cost for installation and no quarterly rentals, and certainly when the housekeeping allowance is small it is better to pay so much a day or a week instead of having to face a quarterly bill; also the constant production of pennies or shillings does bring home to the person using the gas that it is not just gas but hard cash which is being used. In some residential hotels and chambers each room is fitted with a slot fire and the bathrooms with slot geysers, so that the guest knows the exact cost of fire and bath, and pays it there and then.
Finally, all gas users should learn to read the meter, a simple task which the lady demonstrator will teach or which can be learned from a card of instructions. Then the meter should be watched. If an increased expenditure of gas is noticed the matter should be inquired into, as there may be an escape, or some one may be forgetting to turn out the fire or lights when they are not needed.
But it is so expensive to fit up a "Labour-Saving House," you object.
That depends on many circumstances, the length of your lease, for example. Allow for the interest on the capital you spend, and possibly a sinking fund to repay it, and then count what you save in cleaning, in wages, in fuel, etc. Often you will find that you get back the money you have spent in a few years.