The Practical Value and Use of Fireless Cookers
This twentieth century is the age of progress in many directions, but most of all in Domestic Science. Never before has so much attention been devoted to the home. Journalists are giving columns of space to this topic. Churches are directing their efforts to the betterment of the home. Women's Clubs and charitable organizations have taken up the study of the home. The most important result of all this action and thought is the widespread awakening to the fact that the social and moral standing of the home is directly dependent upon its hygienic and economic condition.
In view of this fact, the National Federation of Women's Clubs has practically covered the United States with their County, State, and National Committees on Housekeeping. They know that bad cooking in the home means unsatisfied stomachs, to gratify whose cravings the saloons are filled; it means anemic children, a physical condition that tends to produce criminals; it means premature funerals. To remedy these evils, churches, journalists, philanthropists, clubs are alike working, and all are working along the same lines—that is, better home furnishings, better fuels, better utensils, more efficient, more economic, and less laborious methods of housekeeping. They have not only sought and introduced new inventions, but they have studied the past and adapted and bettered the old.
Among the adaptations of the old ideas with new and modern improvements is the fireless cooker. Ages ago Norwegian and German peasant women, obliged to be away from the house all day working in the fields, knew the secret of bringing food to the boiling point and then continuing its cooking and keeping it hot by packing it in an improvised box of hay. In the evening when the women returned, weary and worn from their field labor, there was the family dinner all ready to serve.
German club women were the first to see the value of this idea adapted to the needs of the German working class of the present day. These German club women revived the hay boxes and distributed numbers of them among poor families and began an educational campaign on their use. The American manufacturer, ever on the alert for ideas, was quick to perceive the economic and commercial advantages of making such an appliance in an up-to-date manner, and so to-day we have on the market numerous fireless cookers.
The principle of fireless cooking, though it bears the difficult name of recaloration, is simple enough. It is merely the retention of heat through complete insulation, just as we retain cold in the ice-box by complete insulation. In the first case, a material which is a poor conductor of heat is interposed between the kettle of hot food and the surrounding atmosphere to prevent radiation or the escape of heat into the surrounding air. In the second case, a poor conductor of heat is placed between the ice and the warmer surrounding atmosphere to prevent the contact of the atmosphere with the ice and the consequent equalization of temperatures. A vacuum is an excellent non-conductor of heat and is employed in the Thermos bottles advertised for use on automobile trips, but a vacuum is expensive and difficult to obtain, which accounts for the high price of Thermos bottles. The effort has been to find some insulating agent within the means of the average housewife. This has now been done in the metal-lined cookers.
The explanation of the cooking principle is equally simple. Ordinarily we heat food to a certain temperature, say, the boiling point, and then we leave it over the fire for some time, not to get hotter, that would be impossible, but to keep it at the same degree of heat, and to do this we must, on account of radiation into the surrounding atmosphere, keep on supplying heat. In the fireless cooker the heat once generated is conserved, and there is no need to add thereto.
Herein lies the economy in fuel. You have only to burn gas long enough to bring the food to the boiling point, and the fireless cooker does the rest. You can put dinner on to cook, and go to work, to the theatre, to visit a friend, or read, or sew, without giving your meal any further attention till time to serve it. This sounds like a fairy tale, but it is absolutely true.
By the fireless cooker you save nine-tenths of the fuel, and ninety-nine hundredths of your temper, your time, and your labor. You do not become perspiring and cross in a hot kitchen. You do not have scorched pots and kettles to scrape and scour and wash.
Another point in favor of fireless cooking is that it is attended by absolutely no odors. Such vegetables as onions and cabbage can be cooked without any one's suspecting they are in the house.