Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each one links straight to the page it comes from.

It cooks while you sleep. Cereals placed in the cooker at night "'cook while you sleep' and are ready to be eaten at breakfast" — the fireless cooker's most-loved trick, in the book's own quotation marks. Read it in the book →
The same box also freezes ice cream. "Toledo Fireless Cookstoves retain cold just as they retain heat" — break the ice fine, one cup rock salt to three cups ice, and freeze your cream in the eight-quart utensil. Read it in the book →
Cheap beef comes out expensive. "Cheaper cuts of roast beef may be transformed by fireless cooking to resemble the choicest, most expensive" — and fireless chicken "melts in your mouth." Read it in the book →
Every food has a radiator temperature. The heat table reads like a code book: biscuits 425, bread 400, roast chicken 550, custards 375 — soapstone radiators heated to the degree before the lid ever closes. Read it in the book →
The Don'ts are a poem of failure. "Don't start cooking with underheated radiators. Don't use one radiator when two are required… Don't allow draughts to blow on the radiator when it is being heated and then blame the radiator." Read it in the book →
Fish waits for you without falling apart. The fireless is "specially serviceable for cooking fish when one wishes to find the meal cooked when arriving home, as fish does not become soft nor fall to pieces." Read it in the book →
It doubles as a proofing box. The fireless is "an excellent place in which to set the bread to rise, for the temperature is always the same" no matter what the kitchen does overnight. Read it in the book →
Canning rubbers expire annually. The canning chapter's sterilizing rules include one hard law: "Rubbers should be new every season." Read it in the book →
A tough chicken gets three hours. Roasting time depends on the bird's age: an hour and a half for a young chicken, two hours for an older one, "and a very tough chicken 3 hours." Read it in the book →
The companion appliance cooks a whole dinner at once. The Conservo "will cook a complete meal at one [time] — meats, vegetables, desserts… it saves food, too, for Conservo prevents shrinkage, or evaporation." Read it in the book →