History Wood Stove Cooking

[18thVirginia]

The same lady, Gayle Smith, who demonstrated Open Hearth cooking also demonstrates wood stove cooking:

http://theadvocate.com/features/food/9003206-123/cooking-class-demonstrates-versatility-of

"Getting back to the history of stoves, she said metal stoves were imported into the United States from Holland and England during the early 1800s, but by the 1840s, wood-burning stoves used for cooking, heating and laundry were being manufactured in America. Coal-burning stoves became available after the Civil War, which ended in 1865.

Americans heading west on wagon trains took along the same type of four-burner, "economy model" stove Collins demonstrated because it could be taken apart, she said, adding that the main part weighs 75 pounds. It also has an oven door on each side.

One needs proper equipment for cooking on a wood-burning stove, Collins and Smith said. Sturdy pots such as cast iron, enamel wear, heavy aluminum or stainless steel are best; "graniteware thin pots tended to scorch," Collins said.

The fuel must be well-seasoned hardwood, split small and dried for at least three months after it is split."Expired Image Removed

I have cooked on the later kind of wood stove with oven and warming oven. Made a great soup that you could leave on the burner for a good part of a day--which was nice in the winter time. Must have been something else in the summer.

 

[28thNewYork]

The same lady, Gayle Smith, who demonstrated Open Hearth cooking also demonstrates wood stove cooking:

I have cooked on the later kind of wood stove with oven and warming oven. Made a great soup that you could leave on the burner for a good part of a day--which was nice in the winter time. Must have been something else in the summer.

One of the reason why kitchens were frequently in separate buildings or separated from the "main house" by a covered breezeway.

 

[diane]

One of the reason why kitchens were frequently in separate buildings or separated from the "main house" by a covered breezeway.

There was a really old lodge up here in the mountains that started out as a kind of cookhouse/barracks for lumberjacks. They had the kitchen separate from the rest of the lodge, connected by a breezeway. A fire started in the kitchen and that was all that burned - hopefully!

 

[ole]

There was a really old lodge up here in the mountains that started out as a kind of cookhouse/barracks for lumberjacks. They had the kitchen separate from the rest of the lodge, connected by a breezeway. A fire started in the kitchen and that was all that burned - hopefully!

The second reason.

Mom cooked on a woodstove until around '54. We didn't have a cookhouse, but a number of farms nearby did.

 

[E_just_E]

My grandparents had a wood stove with a couple of stove top elements they used for cooking, as their main heating apparatus. I remember eating toast from bread that was put right on the stove and it was incredible. The oven was tricky and I remember that my grandma and the other ladies of the area taking big oven sheets full of food to the neighborhood baker mid morning (after they were done with their bread cooking etc) to cook.