Choice Recipes and How to Operate a Fireless Cookstove

The manual for a vanished appliance: a heat-retaining box that cooked dinner without fire, sold by the Toledo Cooker Company, 1920.

This site is the complete 1920 book Choice Recipes and How to Operate a Fireless Cookstove, page by page as originally printed — period spelling, remedies and opinions included. About this edition →

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Recipes

24 recipes

Highlights

Vegetables (EGETABLES are always better)

EGETABLES are always better tasting, and contain greater nutritive V value, when fireless cooked. All vegetables are not fireless…

Bread and Biscuits

N baking bread or biscuits, the Fireless Cookstove is a pronounced success, as it browns the crusts and bakes thoroughly without…

Canning in the Fireless Cookstove

THE jars, covers and rubbers must be perfectly sterile. Sterilize these by placing in large utensil, covering with cold water…

Fruits

Dried Fruits There are two methods of cooking dried fruits in the fireless. In either method soak the fruit 10 hours. This…

Cereals

General Instructions ATMEAL and cereals of all kinds are best cooked by the fireless method. A much enjoyed feature of the…

Pies

Pastry for Pies NE and one-half cups sifted flour, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ cup lard (or lard and butter), 7 tablespoons ice water…

The Radiator Heats

Every food's soapstone-radiator temperature, from the book's own table — custards at 375, pork at 550.

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Curious Facts

10 genuinely curious things this book actually says, each linked to its page.

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Rights & ReuseThe complete text of Choice Recipes and How to Operate a Fireless Cookstove (1920) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.