History Of The Cooker

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

A kitchen stove, often referred to simply as a stove or cooker, is a kitchen appliance designed for cooking. Stoves in the kitchen rely on direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an oven used for baking. Cookers are heated by burning wood or charcoal; "gas stoves" are heated with gas; and "electric stoves" with electricity.

The stove is the most used household appliance since ancient times. The early clay stoves, which completely closed the fire, were known as early as the time of the Chinese Qing dynasty (221 BC-206/207 BC) and a similar design known as kamado (か ま).ど), appeared in the Kofun period (3rd and 6th centuries) in Japan. These stoves are loaded with wood or charcoal through a hole in the front. China, Korea, and Japan discovered indoor stoves much earlier than Western civilizations.

Before the 18th century in Europe, people cooked on open fires loaded with wood. High-waisted hearths and the first chimneys appeared in the Middle Ages, so cooks no longer had to kneel or sit to eat or cook. Cooking was done mainly in cauldrons hanging over the fire. The heat is regulated by placing the boiler higher or lower than the fire.

Open hearths and furnaces had three main drawbacks, which gave rise to an evolutionary series of improvements from the 16th century onwards: they were dangerous, caused a lot of smoke, and had low thermal efficiency. Attempts have been made to close the fire in order to make better use of the heat generated and thus to reduce the consumption of wood. An early stage were stoves resembling a fireplace: the fire was closed on three sides with brick walls and covered with an iron plate. This technique has also caused a change in the kitchen utensils used for cooking, as flat utensils are required instead of boilers.

The first design that completely closed the fire was the 1735 Castrol stove, built by the French architect François de Cuvilliés. This stove is a masonry structure with several holes covered with perforated iron plates. Towards the end of the 18th century, the design was refined and the thermal efficiency improved even more.

A significant improvement in fuel technology comes with the advent of gas. The first gas stoves were developed in the 1820s, but they remain isolated experiments. James Sharp patented the gas stove in Northampton, England in 1826 and opened a gas stove factory in 1836. His invention was put on sale by Smith & Philips in 1828.

As electricity became widely and economically available, electric stoves became a popular alternative to combustion appliances. One of the first such devices was patented by the Canadian inventor Thomas Ahearn in 1892. The electric stove was shown at the Chicago Fair in 1893, where an electrified modern kitchen was displayed.

Unlike the gas stove, in the beginning the electric stove was slow, this was partly due to unknown technologies and the need for cities to be electrified. Early electric stoves were unsatisfactory due to the cost of electricity (compared to wood, coal or natural gas), the limited capacity of the electricity company, poor temperature regulation and the short life of the heating elements.

The high-end gas stove, called the "AGA" stove, was invented in 1922 by Swedish Nobel Laureate Gustaf Dalen. Gustaf Dalen lost his sight in an explosion while developing his earlier invention, a porous gas storage substrate, Agamasan. Forced to stay at home, Dalen discovered that his wife was exhausted from cooking. Although he is blind, he strives to develop a new stove that is able to offer a variety of culinary techniques and is easy to use.

Adopting the principle of heat storage, it combines one heat source, two large hotplates and two ovens in one unit: AGA cooker. The stove was introduced in England in 1929.

The microwave oven was developed in the 1940s and uses microwave radiation to directly heat water retained in food.