Cooking with gas

 Mrs Wicken had before her, on a large table, the materials carefully prepared, and their manipulation she as carefully and clearly explained, and, with an Acme gas stove, she cooked and placed before her audience most delicious little dishes, the appetising effect of which could not be doubted. Herald (Melbourne), 27 July 1887, p. 4, ‘Cooking lectures’.

Classes in cookery were made possible, and their popularity influenced by, the gas stove. Cooking demonstrations were dependent on some form of portable apparatus on which to cook. It was the gas stove which made the cooking class viable across a range of towns and venues, Temperance Halls, Mechanics’ Institutes, the School of Arts and rooms in the Town Hall, anywhere where gas was connected, and a stove could be provided would suffice. When Miss Whiteside conducted a demonstration in the reception room of Government House in Sydney the ‘cooking apparatus’ was supplied with gas via rubber tubing connected to two of the gas brackets used for lighting.[1] In Mrs Wicken’s case the stove was invariably supplied by a local retailer of cooking equipment and it was usual for the local gas supplier to provide fuel at no charge. 

The use of gas for both cooking and lighting was modern and progressive but not inexpensive which meant that in the first instance the use of gas in the domestic sphere was the purview of the wealthy. Hence understanding and mastering gas cooking appliances was only likely to be of interest to ladies of the middle classes. The novelty of this new appliance and interest in how to use it contributed to make these demonstrations both fashionable and sought after.

The gas cooker was a recent, but not new invention. Buckmaster’s lectures at the 1873 International Exhibit in South Kensington had used gas stoves and gas cooking was part of the curriculum at the National Training School for Cookery (NTSC). Five Australian manufacturers exhibited gas cookers at the Intercolonial Exhibition held in Melbourne in 1875. Mr A. R. Walker, who claimed to be the first manufacturer of gas stoves in Australia, exhibited six different models suitable for preparing meals for from six to 25 persons. His designs had various significant features including modifications to allow for heating laundry irons and could be purchased with or without boilers for hot water.[2] Since 1873, when he had first exhibited gas stoves with James Ellis, Walker had supplied 2000 from his factory in Latrobe Street.

At the Intercolonial Exhibition Walker teamed up with Alfred Wilkinson, the chef de cuisine at the Athenaeum Club, to provide a multi course lunch for 20 people, cooked on one of Mr. Walker’s gas stoves.[3] The meal was pronounced excellent and the following year Wilkinson produced The Australian Cook a complete manual of cookery suitable for the Australian Colonies with special reference to the gas cooking stove.[4] It is likely that the publication of this volume was sponsored by Walker as a vehicle for stimulating interest in his products, and as such marks it as one of the very first cookery books to actively promote this new technology. Marie Jenny Sugg’s The Art of Cooking with Gas, which both advocated the use of gas and promoted her husband’s products, was not published until 1890 and was the first in Britain to claim to be written specifically for gas stoves.[5]

While gas stoves quickly moved into commercial operations, like the Atheneum Club, take-up of domestic gas cookers was slow. Acceptance occurred in three phases, with gas stoves starting as an expensive luxury in the 1870s, followed by growing interest and encouragement by manufacturers of stoves and suppliers of gas in the 1880s and finally gaining increased adoption in the 1890s. [6] Gradual improvements in the design of the stove to accommodate technological advances and the introduction of schemes whereby appliances could be hired rather than bought out right added to the growing enthusiasm for gas cooking. [7] By 1887 there were some 4000 gas cookers in use in Sydney.[8] The eventual embracing of the gas stove followed active promotion to potential users but also coincided with the growing dearth of domestic servants which meant that ladies were no longer in a position to distance themselves from household tasks. The need for more efficiency and increasing emphasis on scientific home management led to the more ready acceptance of labour-saving devices in general. 

Before cooking with gas became popular, most households either still cooked over an open fire or used a cast iron kitchen range of one sort or another, or a combination of the two. The cast iron range was essentially a black metal box with either an open or closed firebox, a flat, stable cooking surface for pans, and an oven.[9] Because they burned solid fuel these stoves still needed to be set into a fire-place or an alcove with a chimney. Although less messy, and more efficient than an open fire, closed ranges still required wood to be chopped or coal to be shovelled, the fire set and the whole appliance rigorously maintained. The Official Handbook for the National Training School for Cookery described a twelve step process for cleaning a closed range starting with cleaning out the ashes, cleaning the flues, dismantling the stove top and finally removing any rust with fine emery cloth and painting with blacking.[10] Achieving and maintaining the right temperature for baking and roasting required a combination of guess work and considerable experience and, since the fire was usually left burning all day, these appliances added considerably to the heat of the kitchen.

The advantages of cooking with gas seem obvious. It was cleaner since there was no smoke, no ash and no wood pile or coal scuttle in the kitchen. Gas cooking was more economical since there was no wastage of heat, it could be switched on when required and turned off when not in use, which also made the gas stove a boon in an Australian summer. The amount of heat was much easier to manage by controlling the flow of gas, although heat distribution was still problematic since early gas ovens had no thermostat or insulation, and the stove itself was easier to clean and maintain. In addition, the gas stove allowed for greater efficiency. With no need to chop wood or shovel coal and no fire to lay, light and constantly tend, the cook could be more productive now that she had more time to actually cook. As with the wood or coal burning cast iron stove, the gas stove allowed food to be cooked on the top surface while, other dishes were baked in the oven and thus made it easier to prepare more elaborate dishes and meals of several courses.[11]

Nonetheless home cooks were wary. Cast iron stoves had been available in Australia since the early years of the nineteenth century but their acceptance had been grudging. Traditionally the fire in the kitchen was not used just for the usual cooking processes of roasting, boiling, steaming, frying, it was also a source of heat for baking bread and making jam, for boiling water for washing clothes and bathing, and for other household chores such as soap making and even heating the iron. Potential users of the new cast iron ranges needed to be convinced that all these processes were still possible, and that usual work practices and traditional values would be maintained.[12] Although some households enthusiastically embraced this new appliance, by mid-nineteenth century the majority persisted with traditional cooking methods. Moreover, even in those kitchens which boasted a cast iron stove, meat was still roasted before an open fire, a pattern of only partial acceptance of new technology which would persist into the early decades of the next century.[13] Mrs Wicken admitted that roasting before an open fire was ‘no doubt, the finest way of cooking a prime joint of mutton, lamb, beef or veal’ but assured cooks that ‘baking or roasting’ in an oven ‘answers exceedingly well if the operation of cooking in carefully conducted’. She was confident that: ‘Meat roasted skilfully in a gas oven cannot be detected from meat cooked before an open fire’.[14]

In addition to all the negatives associated with cast iron stoves in general, gas cooking ranges raised further concerns. Fears centred around the possibility of explosions and gas leaks. Gas was smelly, the fumes were known to be toxic and thought likely to poison the food cooked in a gas oven. In addition, consumers were discouraged by the initial outlay for connection added to the cost of the stove and fittings and need to be convinced that these new appliances were economical to run. Users needed to be encouraged, for example, to make sure that the gas flame was extinguished when not in use so as not to waste fuel.[15] Enter the cooking demonstrator.

While the promotion of cooking with gas was not usually her primary aim, Mrs Wicken was familiar with the operation of gas cookers and used them in her demonstrations from the outset. When she rented the Temperance Hall in Sydney in 1886 she applied to the board of the Australian Gas Light Company and was allowed free use of a stove and the supply of gas at half the usual rate.[16] It was certainly in the interests of the gas supplier and the agent for gas stoves in the places where demonstrations were to be held to involve themselves in these cooking lessons. Not only did the audience see a gas stove in use but newspapers often reported on the equipment that was used. For example, Wicken’s classes as the technical college in Hobart were facilitated in part by the free supply of a stove and gas:

The gas stove used was the ‘Eureka’ and by its side stood one by Wright of Birmingham, both of which had been fixed by the Hobart Gas Co. without expense to the Board, and the gas for which is to be supplied free of charge for the 12 lectures. The stove in use worked splendidly. The Gas Co. had also a display of various heating stoves and other appliances, showing the perfection to which such things have now been brought.[17]

Similarly, the Darling Downs Gazette reported that all the utensils used by Wicken were available from the local ironmonger, and that she had expressed her satisfaction with their quality.[18]

Gradually gas companies became aware of the advantages of hosting their own cookery demonstrations to promote the use of gas for cooking. To cultivate a positive public image, they looked to women with respected credentials, opening up job opportunities for trained women to act as cookery demonstrators and also making the field much more competitive. Lauded as a ‘teacher of scientific cookery’, Miss Swayne, who had been taught by Wicken at Sydney Technical College, was the first demonstrator for the Australian Gas Light Company at their new showroom on the corner of Gipps Street, Haymarket, next door to Anthony Horden’s furniture warehouse after it opened in 1893.[19] Mrs Isabel Ross, whose credentials included a teaching diploma from the NTSC, made her mark in Victoria as a demonstrator working for the Metropolitan Gas Company beginning in the 1890s and published collections of her recipes. [20]

The mission of the ‘lady demons’ who worked for the gas companies in England, has been described as one of both feminizing and domesticating this new technology.[21] Wicken’s was a similar role. The benefits of gas cooking were a neat fit for the preoccupations of the domestic science movement and the promotion of scientific cooking, although the taming of the gas stove, making it appear both safe and simple to operate, was incidental to her overall task of making kitchen work fashionable and appear both respectable and genteel.

 

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[1] Evening News, 13 March 1880, p. 3 ‘Miss Whiteside’s cookery’. ‘The gas cooking apparatus stood on the table furnished by a supply from two of the gas brackets, conveyed by rubber tubing to the stove’.

[2] The Australasian (Melbourne) 4 September 1875, p. 5 ‘Gas, coke, apparatus for lighting and cooking, hardware & co.’

[3] Age (Melb.), 1 October 1875, p. 2, ‘News of the Day’, the dinner included soup, roast beef, rhubarb tart and cabinet pudding.

[4] Alfred J. Wilkinson, The Australian cook a complete manual of cookery suitable for the Australian colonies with special reference to the gas cooking stove (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1876) 

[5] Marie Jenny Sugg, The Art of cooking with gas (London: Cassell and Co., 1890). See Elizabeth Driver, A bibliography of cookery books published in Britain 1875–1914, (London: Prospect Books, 1989). William Thomas Sugg was a gas engineer. The business William Sugg and Company was, and is, famous for gas lighting. Sugg lights which were used in Ballarat and can still be seen in Lydiard Street.

[6] Rosemary Broomham, First Light: 150 years of gas (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, c. 1987), pp. 75–6, 88.

[7] Broomham, p. 86. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 October 1884, p. 3 AGL gas cooking stoves for hire ‘advertising’.

[8] Broomham, p. 76

[9] Kimberley Webber, ‘Romancing the machine: The enchantment of domestic technology in the Australian home, 1850-1914’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Sydney, 1996, p. 81. 

[10] Rose Cole The official handbook for the National Training School for Cookery 2^nd. edition (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879), pp. 13–14. See also Harriett Wicken The Australian home: A handbook of domestic economy (Sydney: Edwards, Dunlop & Co., 1891), pp. 165–168.

[11] Webber, p. 80

[12] Webber, p. 80

[13] Webber p. 89. Anne Clendinning, Demons of domesticity: women and the English gas industry, 1889-1939 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2004), p. 41 argues that ‘the cosy hearth with its attendant roast beef gently turning on a spit became a powerful image of English domesticity’ satisfying a sentimental ideal that the fully enclosed gas stove did not. In addition, the efficacy of the gas cooker was dubious regarding the preparation of that national favorite, roast beef, since cooking in an oven was technically described as ‘baking’. Doubters claimed that the meat’s taste could not compare to open-roasted beef and that the gas stove tainted the drippings, others were critical claiming basting the meat was near impossible. Webber, p. 86, also suggests that consumer dissatisfaction with the cast iron stove also arose because of the multiplicity of designs.

[14] Wicken, Australian home, pp. 47, 49.

[15] Wicken, Australian Home, pp. 165–6, ‘In turning off the burners be careful to turn to the stop, and when the stove is finished with turn the gas off at the main tap. Gas stoves soon become very expensive unless the gas is turned off as soon as finished with. As putting out and relighting is no trouble, it should be turned off the moment cookery is finished.’

[16] Broomham, p. 77

[17] Mercury (Hobart), 12 December 1889, p. 2, ‘The Mercury’. Also gas company lends stove Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, 30 March 1897, p. 5, ‘Technical College’.

[18] Darling Downs Gazette, 15 January 1896, p. 2, ‘The cookery classes’.

[19] Evening News, 19 December 1894, p. 5, ‘Gas cookery’. Broomham, pp. 88, 90. See Sydney Mail and NSW Advertiser, 11 November 1893, p. 1001, ‘Events of the week’. Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 19 May 1894, p. 7 ‘Gas cookery’ – demonstration for the Windsor gas Light Company. Miss Asche, another of Wicken’s pupils, gave classes in King Street, Australian Star, 15 September 1896, p. 2 ‘Advertising’.

[20] Isabel Ross and Metropolitan Gas Company, Original and well-certified recipes in economic cookery (Melbourne: Ferguson & Mitchell, printers, 1894); Isabel Ross, Cookery class recipes: as taught in the kitchens of the Metropolitan Gas Company, Melbourne (Melbourne: Echo Publishing Company, 1900); Isabel Ross, Cookery class recipes: as taught in the kitchens of the Metropolitan Gas Company (Melbourne. Melbourne: Specialty Press, 1907); Isabel Ross, Invalid cookery class recipes as taught in the kitchen of the Metropolitan Gas Company Melbourne (Melbourne: Anderson, Gowan & Du Rieu, 1917).

[21] Clendinning, p. 66. Webber pp. 90–1 also notes that ‘the major consumer resistance to the cast iron stove was its challenge to the “cheerful fireside”. Heavy black and almost monstrous in appearance it was the archetypal product of the industrial revolution. Its entry into the home was therefore dependent upon it being feminized and domesticated.’ The style of the stove its ‘curved legs and rounded corners, embossed decorations on the front and sides, pierced shelves, decorative handles and nickel plating’ were all designed to give it ‘the aesthetics of the parlour.’