![Holzwarth Ranch stove, RMNP, CO IMG 5350](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Holzwarth_Ranch_stove%2C_RMNP%2C_CO_IMG_5350.JPG)
A kitchen stove, often called simply a
stove
A stove or range is a device that burns fuel or uses electricity to generate heat inside or on top of the apparatus, to be used for general warming or cooking. It has evolved highly over time, with cast-iron and induction versions being develope ...
or a
cooker
Cooker may refer to several types of cooking appliances and devices used for cooking foods.
Cookers
* AGA cooker – a heat storage stove and cooker, which works on the principle that a heavy frame made from cast iron components can absorb hea ...
, is a
kitchen appliance
A home appliance, also referred to as a domestic appliance, an electric appliance or a household appliance, is a machine which assists in household functions such as cooking, cleaning and food preservation.
Appliances are divided into three ty ...
designed for the purpose of
cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of
direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an
oven, used for
baking. "Cookstoves" (also called "cooking stoves" or "wood stoves") are heated by burning wood or charcoal; "gas stoves" are heated by gas; and "electric stoves" by electricity. A stove with a built-in
cooktop
A cooktop (American English), stovetop (American English) or hob (British English), is a device commonly used for cooking that is commonly found in kitchens and used to apply heat to the base of pans or pots. Cooktops are often found integrated ...
is also called a range.
In the industrialized world, as
stove
A stove or range is a device that burns fuel or uses electricity to generate heat inside or on top of the apparatus, to be used for general warming or cooking. It has evolved highly over time, with cast-iron and induction versions being develope ...
s replaced open fires and
brazier
A brazier () is a container used to burn charcoal or other solid fuel for cooking, heating or cultural rituals. It often takes the form of a metal box or bowl with feet. Its elevation helps circulate air, feeding oxygen to the fire. Braziers ...
s as a source of more efficient and reliable heating, models were developed that could also be used for cooking, and these came to be known as ''
kitchen
A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation in a dwelling or in a commercial establishment. A modern middle-class residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running wate ...
stoves''.
[Montagne, Prosper ''New Larousse Gastronomique'' Hamlin Publishing Group 1977 268,901 Quoting ]Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (; 27 January 181417 September 1879) was a French architect and author who restored many prominent medieval landmarks in France, including those which had been damaged or abandoned during the French Revolution. H ...
on cooking in the Middle Ages: "The division of stoves into several compartments as in our day was seldom seen. The dishes were cooked on the fire itself, and these fierce fires did not allow for dishes which required constant stirring, or to be made in frying pans". When homes began to be heated with
central heating
A central heating system provides warmth to a number of spaces within a building from one main source of heat. It is a component of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (short: HVAC) systems, which can both cool and warm interior spaces.
...
systems, there was less need for an appliance that served as both heat source and cooker and stand-alone cookers replaced them. ''Cooker'' and ''stove'' are often used interchangeably.
The fuel-burning stove is the most basic design of a kitchen stove. As of 2012, it was found that "Nearly half of the people in the world (mainly in the
developing world), burn
biomass (wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung) and coal in rudimentary cookstoves or open fires to cook their food." More fuel-efficient and
environmentally sound biomass cookstoves are being developed for use there.
Natural gas
Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...
and
electric
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by ...
stoves are the most common today in western countries. They are equally effective and safe; electricity may reduce environmental impact if generated from non-fossil sources. The choice between the two is mostly a matter of personal preference and availability of
utilities
A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and ...
.
Bottled gas ranges are used where utilities are unavailable.
Modern kitchen stoves often have a "stovetop" or "
cooktop
A cooktop (American English), stovetop (American English) or hob (British English), is a device commonly used for cooking that is commonly found in kitchens and used to apply heat to the base of pans or pots. Cooktops are often found integrated ...
" American English; known as the "
hob" in British English as well as an oven. A "drop-in range" is a combination stovetop-and-oven unit that installs in a kitchen's lower cabinets flush with the countertop. Most modern stoves come in a unit with built-in
extractor hood
A kitchen hood, exhaust hood, extractor hood, or range hood is a device containing a mechanical fan that hangs above the stove or cooktop in the kitchen. It removes airborne grease, combustion products, fumes, smoke, heat, and steam from the ai ...
s. Today's major brands offer both gas and electric stoves, and many also offer dual-fuel ranges combining a gas stovetop and an electric oven.
History
Early kitchen stoves
![Edo Kamado](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Edo_Kamado.JPG)
Early
clay
Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4).
Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
stoves that enclosed the fire completely were known from the Chinese
Qin Dynasty
The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), ...
(221
BC–206/207 BC), and a similar design known as ''
kamado
A is a traditional Japanese wood- or charcoal-fueled cook stove.
Etymology and history
The kamado was invented in China, spread to Korea, and eventually made its way to Japan.Farrispp.83-87./ref> The name kamado is the Japanese word for ...
'' (かまど) appeared in the
Kofun period (3rd–6th century) in Japan. These stoves were fired by wood or
charcoal through a hole in the front. In both designs, pots were placed over or hung into holes at the top of the knee-high construction. In the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
, references to similar stoves and cooking ranges where the fire was lit from below are recorded as early as the 2nd-century AD, constructed of clay and either made portable or attached to the ground. Raised
''kamados'' were developed in Japan during the
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...
(1603–1867).
Prior to the 18th century in
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
, people cooked over open fires fueled by
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...
. In the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, waist-high brick-and-mortar hearths and the first
chimneys appeared, so that cooks no longer had to kneel or sit to tend to foods on the fire. The fire was built on top of the construction; the cooking done mainly in
cauldron
A cauldron (or caldron) is a large pot ( kettle) for cooking or boiling over an open fire, with a lid and frequently with an arc-shaped hanger and/or integral handles or feet. There is a rich history of cauldron lore in religion, mythology, and ...
s hung above the fire or placed on
trivet
A trivet is an object placed between a serving dish or bowl, and a dining table, usually to protect the table from heat damage. Whilst tri- means three, and -vet comes from -ped, meaning 'foot' / 'feet', trivets often have four 'feet', an ...
s. The heat was regulated by placing the cauldron higher or lower above the fire.
Open fire systems had three significant disadvantages that prompted an evolutionary series of improvements from the 16th century onwards: it was dangerous, it produced much smoke, and the heat efficiency was poor. Attempts were made to enclose the fire to make better use of the heat that is generated and thus reduce the wood consumption. An early step was the ''fire chamber'': the fire was enclosed on three sides by brick-and-mortar walls and covered by an iron plate. This technique also caused a change in the kitchenware used for cooking, for it required flat-bottomed
pots instead of cauldrons. The first design that completely enclosed the fire was the 1735 ''Castrol stove'', built by the
Walloon-
Bavarian architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
François de Cuvilliés
François de Cuvilliés, sometimes referred to as ''the Elder'' (23 October 1695, Soignies, Hainaut14 April 1768, Munich), was a Belgian-born Bavarian decorative designer and architect. He was instrumental in bringing the Rococo style to the Wi ...
. This stove was a masonry construction with several fire holes covered by perforated iron plates and was also known as a ''stew stove''. Near the end of the 18th century, the design was refined by hanging the pots in holes through the top iron plate, thus improving heat efficiency even more.
Origins of the modern kitchen range
The modern kitchen range was invented by Sir
Benjamin Thompson
Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, FRS (german: Reichsgraf von Rumford; March 26, 1753August 21, 1814) was an American-born British physicist and inventor whose challenges to established physical theory were part of the 19th-century revolut ...
, Count Rumford in the 1790s. As an active scientist and prolific inventor, he put the study of heat onto a scientific basis and developed improvements for chimneys, fireplaces and industrial furnaces, which led to his invention of the kitchen range.
His
Rumford fireplace
The Rumford fireplace is a tall, shallow fireplace designed by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an Anglo-American physicist best known for his investigations of heat. Its shallow, angled sides are designed to reflect heat into the room, and it ...
created a sensation in London when he introduced the idea of restricting the
chimney opening to increase the updraught. This was a much more efficient way to heat a room than earlier fireplaces. He and his workers modified fireplaces by inserting bricks into the hearth to make the side walls angled, and added a choke to the chimney to increase the speed of air going up the flue. The effect was to produce a streamlined air flow, so all the smoke would go up into the chimney rather than lingering and entering the room. It also had the effect of increasing the efficiency of the fire, and gave extra control of the rate of combustion of the fuel, whether wood or
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when ...
. Many fashionable London houses were modified to his instructions, and became free of smoke.
Following on from this success, Thompson designed a kitchen range made of brick, with a cylindrical oven and holes in the top for the insertion of pots. When not needed, the opening could be covered over leaving the fire to smolder gently. This kitchen range was much more fuel efficient than the prevailing open hearth method and to a great degree safer. His range was widely adopted in large cooking establishments, including at the
soup kitchens that Thompson built in
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
. However, it was too big and unwieldy to make much of an impact on domestic cooking.
The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a steady improvement in stove design.
Cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
stoves replaced those made of masonry and their size shrank to allow them to be incorporated into the domestic kitchen. By the 1850s, the modern kitchen, equipped with a cooking range, was a fixture of middle-class homes. In 1850 Mary Evard invented the Reliance Cook Stove, which was divided in two with one half for dry baking and the other half for moist. Patents issued to Mary Evard are and on April 7, 1868. She demonstrated this stove with her husband at the
St. Louis World's Fair.
In 1867 Elizabeth Hawks of New York invented and received for a baking attachment for stoves, intended to spread heat thoroughly throughout loaves while keeping the top crust tender, which she called an "Auxiliary Air-chamber for Stoves."
This was so successful that she sold two thousand within months of its release.
Stoves of that era commonly burned
charcoal as well as wood. These stoves had flat tops and the heat was concentrated on one side of the stove top so that cooks could cook things at different temperatures based on where the pot or pan was located. This was called the "piano" system. After coal was replaced with gas, French chefs continued to prefer the smooth cooking surface and so the majority of French gas stoves had flat metal surfaces over the gas burners, which continues to be known as the "French style" today.
Gas
![Gas stove 1851](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Gas_stove_1851.jpg)
A major improvement in fuel technology came with the advent of
gas
Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma).
A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...
. The first gas stoves were developed as early as the 1820s, but these remained isolated experiments. James Sharp patented a gas stove in
Northampton, England
Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England; ...
, in 1826 and opened a gas stove factory in 1836. His invention was marketed by the firm Smith & Philips from 1828. An important figure in the early acceptance of this new technology, was
Alexis Soyer
Alexis Benoît Soyer (4 February 18105 August 1858) was a French chef who became the most celebrated cook in Victorian England. He also tried to alleviate suffering of the Irish poor in the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), and contributed a p ...
, the renowned chef at the
Reform Club
The Reform Club is a private members' club on the south side of Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it comprised an all-male membership for decades, but it was one of the first all-male cl ...
in London. From 1841, he converted his kitchen to consume piped gas, arguing that gas was cheaper overall because the supply could be turned off when the stove was not in use.
A gas stove was shown at
The Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took p ...
in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1851, but it was only in the 1880s that the technology became a commercial success in England. By that stage a large and reliable network for gas
pipeline transport
Pipeline transport is the long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas through a system of pipes—a pipeline—typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than of pipeline in 120 count ...
had spread over much of the country, making gas relatively cheap and efficient for domestic use. Gas stoves only became widespread on the
European Continent
Continental Europe or mainland Europe is the contiguous continent of Europe, excluding its surrounding islands. It can also be referred to ambiguously as the European continent, – which can conversely mean the whole of Europe – and, by ...
and in the United States in the early 20th century.
Electric stove
![Kalgooorlie stove patent drawing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Kalgooorlie_stove_patent_drawing.jpg)
Once electric power was widely and economically available, electric stoves became a popular alternative to fuel-burning appliances. One of the earliest such devices was patented by Canadian inventor
Thomas Ahearn
Thomas Ahearn, PC (June 24, 1855 – June 28, 1938) was a Canadian inventor and businessman. Ahearn, a native of Ottawa, Ontario, was instrumental in the success of a vast streetcar system that was once in Ottawa, the Ottawa Electric Railw ...
in 1892. Ahearn and Warren Y. Soper were owners of Ottawa's Chaudiere Electric Light and Power Company. The electric stove was showcased at the
Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where an electrified model kitchen was shown.
Unlike the gas stove, the electrical stove was slow to catch on, partly due to the unfamiliar technology, and the need for cities and towns to be electrified. Early electric stoves were unsatisfactory due to the cost of electricity (compared with wood, coal, or city gas), limited power available from the electrical supply company, poor temperature regulation, and short life of heating elements. The invention of
nichrome alloy for resistance wires improved the cost and durability of heating elements.
[ Ed Sobey, ''The Way Kitchens Work'', Chicago Review Press, 2010 , page viii]
The first practical design was patented by the Australian David Curle Smith in 1905. His device adopted (following the design of gas stoves) what later became the configuration for most electric stoves: an oven surmounted by a hotplate with a grill tray between them. Curle Smith's stove did not have a thermostat; heat was controlled by the number of the appliance's nine elements that were switched on.
[Introduction by H. A. Willis, ''Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy'', Hesperian Press, 2011, p. 24]
The first electric stoves used
heating element
A heating element converts electrical energy into heat through the process of Joule heating. Electric current through the element encounters resistance, resulting in heating of the element. Unlike the Peltier effect, this process is indepen ...
s made of high-resistance metal to produce heat. The stovetop (range) surface had one or more circular heating elements, insulated with compressed magnesia and sheathed in a spiral metal tube. Heating elements for the oven are of similar construction but an elongated loop to distribute heat. Elements were made as plug-in consumer-replaceable parts and could also be easily removed for cleaning. Temperature of cooking elements was regulated by adjusting a bimetal thermostat control switch, which switched power on and off to control the average heating effect of the elements.
Other technologies
![Aga gc3](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Aga_gc3.jpg)
A high-end gas stove called the
AGA cooker
The AGA cooker oven is a Swedish oven and cooker. Invented and initially produced in Sweden, since 1957 all production has been located in the UK.
History
Originally developed to burn coal or anthracite, the Aga cooker was invented in 1922 by ...
was invented in 1922 by Swedish
Nobel prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
winner
Gustaf Dalén
Nils Gustaf Dalén (; 30 November 1869 – 9 December 1937) was a Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist, engineer, inventor and long-term CEO of the AGA AB, AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was award ...
. As a heat storage
stove
A stove or range is a device that burns fuel or uses electricity to generate heat inside or on top of the apparatus, to be used for general warming or cooking. It has evolved highly over time, with cast-iron and induction versions being develope ...
, it worked on the principle that a heavy frame made from
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
components can absorb heat from a relatively low-intensity but continuously-burning source, and the accumulated heat can then be used when needed for cooking.
Dalén took his design to Britain in 1929, where it was first manufactured under licence in the early 1930s. The
cast iron
Cast iron is a class of iron– carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impur ...
components were first cast at the
Coalbrookdale
Coalbrookdale is a village in the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. It lies within the civil parish called the Gorge.
This is where iron ore was first s ...
foundry in the 1940s, where they are still made today by the
Aga Rangemaster Group. Its popularity in certain parts of English society (owners of medium to large
country houses
An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...
) led to the coining of the term "
AGA Saga
The Aga saga is a subgenre of the family saga genre of literature. The genre is named for the AGA cooker, a type of stored-heat oven that came to be popular in medium to large English country houses, country houses in United Kingdom, the UK after i ...
" in the 1990s, referring to a genre of fiction set amongst stereotypical upper-middle-class society.
Microwave oven
A microwave oven (commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce ...
s were developed in the 1940s, and use
microwave radiation
Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency rang ...
to directly heat the
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...
held inside food.
Cooktop
A cooktop or hob is a cooking appliance that heats the bottoms of pans or pots; it does not have an enclosed oven as used for baking or roasting. Cooktops may be heated by gas or electricity and may also have exhaust systems.
Flattop grills are also being installed into kitchen counters and islands, which do double-duty as a direct cooking surface as well as a platform for heating pots and pans. A
hot plate
A hot plate is a portable self-contained tabletop small appliance cooktop that features one or more electric heating elements or gas burners. A hot plate can be used as a stand-alone appliance, but is often used as a substitute for one of t ...
is a similar device, which is mobile and can be used as an
appropriate technology
Appropriate technology is a movement (and its manifestations) encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by locals, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and loca ...
.
See also
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gas Range
Stoves
Ovens
Stove
A stove or range is a device that burns fuel or uses electricity to generate heat inside or on top of the apparatus, to be used for general warming or cooking. It has evolved highly over time, with cast-iron and induction versions being develope ...