By the turn of the century, steel began to replace iron in stove manufacturing. In 1908, Sears offered only steel ranges with cast-iron fittings. Ranges included baking ovens, warming ovens, thermostats, and a top that could be lifted to lay the fire without removing lids (Strasser, 1983, p. 38).
In the late nineteenth century, gas stoves, ranges and water heaters began to be sold by gas companies or their subsidiaries. The American Gas Association, a trade association of gas companies, subsidized development of gas stoves, hot water heaters, and furnaces (Cowan, 1983, p. 90). Gas cooking encountered resistance because it was originally more expensive and people felt the food tasted different or was unhealthy. The Sears catalog of 1900 did not show a single gas cooking stove. According to Cohen (1982, pp. 20-21), by 1910, a combined gas-coal stove was still considered an innovation.
An article from the same period in the Journal of Home Economics (Rinaker, 1909, pp. 409-412), indicates that electricity had only recently been used in cooking processes, and natural gas could only be found in limited regions. Artificial gas from coke, coal tar, and ammonia was “more generally used,” and kerosene, gasoline, wood, and coal were used as kitchen fuels.
Economist John O. Leeds conducted surveys from 1912 to 1914 of 60 families who were “earning enough for decency.” The families included farm families and professionals. Of the 60, 42 had gas service primarily used for ranges and hot-water boilers, and 53 had electric service. Since his research was conducted for his dissertation at Columbia University, there may have been a regional difference for his findings on the prevalence of gas use (Cowan, 1983, pp. 154-156).
Fireless cookers were popular in the early twentieth century, and books and magazines in the 1920s contained recipes for them. One in the Tuskegee Institute Collection is a wood bucket with an inner metal pail surrounded by sawdust. The Woodrow Wilson House Museum in Washington, DC, has a two-pot fireless cooker in a wooden case (see the first and second photos below). “The cooker was an insulated or air-tight compartment into which foods could be put after having been raised previously to a certain degree of heat.” Soapstones were heated on the stove and placed under or over the pots, or electric fireless cookers used a current long enough to bring the food up to temperature and then shut off to finish cooking without using more fuel. One might heat food in the morning, leave it in the cooker all day, and eat it for dinner. The Sentinel Automatic Cook Stove was a combined gas stove and fireless cooker (Frederick, 1915, p. 17-20). The second photo below, taken in 1921, shows two fireless cookers in the foreground and two commercial steam pressure cookers in the background.
In the early years of the twentieth century, electricity was also being promoted as a fuel for cooking. A 1906 article by H.W. Hillman, who was director of electric heating for General Electric, published an article in which he described the efficiency and conveniences of his own “thoroughly equipped electric house.” (The article included a photo of an electric car, as well.) (pp. 25-34). In a 1907 article, Flowers (p. 598) envisioned that cooking with electricity would mean cooking with uniform heat and no ashes, dust, smoke, or odor from gas, coal, or wood. He also described an electric coffee percolator, chaffing dish, carpet sweeper, sewing machine, and heat pad in his article. The first photo below shows an electric cooking and baking table with several special pots, pans, and a percolator.
In the 1910s, companies advertised kitchen ranges that burned natural or artificial gas and coal or wood with “no parts to change,” as well as portable electric ranges (Burness, 2003, p. 87). Electric appliances, including kitchen ranges, became popular in the 1910s (Burness, 2003, p. 70). The second photo below shows the top of a stove that could use multiple fuels and some of the kinds of special pans and implements, like a waffle iron, available in the early 1920s. Click on the thumbnail photos in the second row below to see stove advertisements from the 1919 volume of Good Housekeeping magazine. The ads show various range styles and their features, as sold in 1919, including stoves that allowed use of different kinds of fuels.
In 1915, the American Stove Company introduced the first effective oven thermostat (Cowan, 1983, pp. 90-91). The thermostat, or regulator, meant a cook no longer needed to constantly check to see if food was undercooked or burnt. Without need for a firebox, the stove could be smaller. The stove did not emit as much heat externally, so was better on hot days (Cohen, 1982, p. 21).
For families who were “struggling to make ends meet,” which were more than half of families before World War I, most women used their cook stove for heating, as well as cooking. For those families, the stoves used coal or wood. In warm weather, the cooking area was uncomfortably hot, and in the winter much of the dwelling was “miserably cold” (Cowan, 1983, p. 163).
The photo at the top of this page was taken between 1902 and 1914 (Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. (1902-1914). Kitchen with stove (having two irons and kettle and hot water tank above it), cupboard (filled with dishes), and table (covered with figured cloth) Retrieved on June 30, 2017 from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-5019-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99).