"Tna 



Ol/S£KE£P£K, 



Reducing the Time and Cost of 

 Cooking 



By Myron T. Sctjdder, New Jersey 



HAVE you ever been out with a little 

 company to tea or dinner when the 

 first course served was Roast Mistress of 

 the House? This is a well-known dish. 

 It is the common fate of housekeepers 

 who entertain. 



But how could she, your hostess, help 

 it? In trying to have things nice for 

 her expected guests she had fussed and 

 worried over that hot stove about all day. 

 The dinner was delicious, but her success 

 was achieved through great personal effort 

 and sacrifice. 



How could she help it, did I say? Why, 

 easily enough if she had only known better. 

 Any good fireless cooker would have 

 solved her difficulties and given her guests 

 just as good food and at the same time an 

 uncooked cook ' 



Cooking without fire! It sounds im- 

 possible, doesn't it? But it was not 

 impossible to that clever Norwegian, the 

 father of the modern fireless cooker, who 

 cooked his fish by boiling it for a few 

 minutes, and then thrust it deep into a 

 haystack until he should need it, sure 

 that when meal time came he would find 

 his fish thoroughly done. 



And so far from being impossible, it 

 is as a matter of fact the most possible 

 and comfortably real thing in house- 

 keeping to-day. For the modern fireless 

 cooker is nothing more than this man's 

 haystack, or a part of it, compressed into 

 a box of convenient size, with two or three 

 nests made in the hay and lined with 

 cloth, into which granite or fibre pails 

 containing food partly cooked are placed 

 and covered with a thick lid padded with 

 hay cushions, so that the heat cannot 

 readily get out. This is the famous "hay 

 box" or "hay stove" which has been ad- 

 vertised so extensively. There are various 

 modifications of it, but the results at- 

 tained are similar '\\\ all cases. 



The principle is clear enough. Vege- 

 table and animal matter, when subjected 

 to heat, undergoes certain changes which 

 make it more palatable as well as more 

 digestible. The chief problem of the 

 kitchen is the economic application of 

 heat to the article that is to be cooked. 

 Suppose you are boiling a piece of meat. 



Heat from the fire passes into the water 

 and so gets to the meat. But instead of 

 remaining in the kettle a large proportion 

 of the heat, some say 95 per cent., radiates 

 into the air, goes to waste, and you must 

 keep applying heat continually or the 

 meat would not be cooked. This tre- 

 mendous waste is what makes cooking 

 expensive, for heat runs into money very 

 fast. 



Now if this heat can be prevented from 

 radiating into the air, a brief application 

 of fire would be entirely sufficient, just 

 enough, say, to bring the water to the 

 boiling point and to warm the meat 



The cloth. Uning when placed In the box con- 

 serves the heat so that the cooking process continues 

 for a very long time after 



thoroughly. Now take the kettle and its 

 contents at this point and place it in a 

 box stuffed with hay or other non-con- 

 ducting materials, or in a pail or box made 

 of indurated fibre or of metal, and properly 

 covered so that the heat will radiate very 

 slowly and imperceptibly. The water 

 will stay hot for many hours — ten, 

 fifteen, perhaps twenty or more — and be 

 cooking the food all the time. And when, 

 some hours afterward, you want your 

 dinner, you can come to the box and find 

 the contents ready to eat. In such a stove 

 the food ■ cannot burn nor can the water 

 boil dry. Nor, strange to say, can the 

 food be easily over-cooked. It comes out 

 just right, with all the nourishment and 

 flavor and juices retained, with no shrink- 



229 



age in the amount, and all at little trouble 

 to yourself. With this cooker you can 

 have onions or cabbage or a real old- 

 fashioned boiled dinner without the usual 

 accompaniment of disagreeable odors per- 

 meating the house. 



The way these fireless cookers retain 

 heat is remarkable. In a test made at 

 an army post, a lo-pound roast of pork 

 was seared till brown and boiled for 

 fifteen minutes; potatoes boiled twenty 

 minutes were placed with the pork; a 

 leg of mutton was boiled fifteen minutes, 

 some suet pudding twenty-five minutes, 

 Boston brown bread twenty minutes, and 

 coffee five minutes. At 9.40 A. m. these 

 were placed in a fireless cooker at a tem- 

 perature of nearly 212 degrees. At 5 p. m. 

 they were taken out, each article being 

 well done, and with the following tem- 

 peratures: the pork and potatoes 163 

 degrees, the mutton 160 degrees, pudding 

 162 degrees, Boston brown bread 160 

 degrees, and the coffee 168 degrees. That 

 is, so little heat had been lost from the 

 box that these articles were still cooking 

 nicely, seven hours after they had been 

 taken off the fire. A fire burning only 

 half an hour had accomplished what with 

 the usual kitchen range or camp fire 

 would have required at least some hours 

 of hot fire. And it should also be noted 

 that between 9.40 A. M., and 5 p. m., the 

 cooking food needed no attention whatever. 



One can see at a glance what a saving of 

 time and fuel is accomplished by the use of 

 fireless cookers. And it should be borne 

 in mind that these contrivances have been 

 so improved that roasting and baking can 

 be done in them as well as boiling and 

 stewing. They may well be used in hotels, 

 boarding-houses, college and preparatory 

 school dormitories, where they can be 

 installed by the dozen if necessary. The 

 small portable cookers are light and easily 

 handled, and can be used in wagons and 

 automobiles, on sailing craft and launches, 

 in camps and, in short, anj-where where 

 cooking has to be done. 



In just one instance let us glance at the 

 possibilities of this device. Take cruising, 

 for instance, by sail or motor power. 

 To-morrow you are to make a long trip, 

 starting before breakfast and continuing 

 until late in the evening. Likely enough 

 it will be rough a part of the day. Instead 

 of having to lash down all pots and kettles 

 on the galley stove and to keep up a fire 



