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Fireless Cooker: Roast
Roast Loin of Lamb Pot Roast.
Chicken Curry Beef à la Mode..
Beef Goulash.
Tripe....
Stuffed Steak..
Roast Veal.
Boiled Chicken. ..
Plum...
Baked Custard.
Cabinet..
Rice Pudding....
Apple Tapioca...
Fig...
Brown Betty.
Steamed Fruit.
Bread.
Cream Tapioca...
MEAT.
TIME ON STOVE. 1 hour. 1 hour. 1 hour. 30 minutes.
TIME IN COOKER. 8 hours.
Over night.
Over night. 6 hours. 30 minutes. 5 hours. 10 minutes. 8 hours. 30 minutes. 5 hours. 45 minutes. 5 hours, 1 hour. 12 hours. 30 minutes. 6 hours. 1 hour. 10 hours. 30 minutes. 6 hours. 15 minutes. 10 hours. 30 minutes. 6 hours. 20 minutes. 4 hours. 30 minutes. 6 hours. 45 minutes. 6 hours. 20 minutes. 6 hours.
PUDDINGS.
PUDDINGS.
TIME ON STOVE.
TIME IN COOKER. 1 hour.
Over night. 20 minutes. 3 hours. 20 minutes. 4 hours. 10 minutes. 3 hours. 10 minutes. 3 hours. 30 minutes. 6 hours. 30 minutes. 4 hours. 30 minutes. 4 hours. 30 minutes. 2 hours. 20 minutes. 3 hours.
A FEW RECIPES FOR FIRELESS spider to get all the brown gravy Beef Stew.
1/2 cupful rice, COOKERY 4 pounds beef 2½ quarts cold water, 2 carrots, 2 onions, 1½ quarts sliced potatoes, cupful rice, 1 tablespoonful salt, 4 chili peppers.
Choose a slice of beef from the top of a round, containing a bit of marrow bone. Put the marrow into the spider, and when fried out, add the meat, cut into pieces, large enough to make a portion; let them cook, turning constantly, until brown. Put part of the meat which has not been browned with the bone into the cold water in the pan of the cooker, and add the brown meat. Rinse out the possible, cover the pail, and let it simmer an hour. Cut the carrots into slices, also the onions and potatoes, and parboil for five minutes. Drain, blanch in cold water, and add to the meat. Put the rice over the fire in cold water, let it boil five minutes, put it also in the pail, then add the salt and peppers, cover closely, and cook twenty minutes. Put the pail into the cooker, shut down the lid, and leave it eight hours.
Boiled Ham.
If the ham is very salty soak it over night in cold water, put it into the pail in the morning, cover with cold water, put the lid on tightly, and bring to the boiling point. Cook ten minutes hard, then simmer for fifteen more, set it into the cooker, and leave it there over night.
Chop Suey.
MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK 1 quart lean pork and chicken, 1 onion, 1 pint celery, 2 tablespoonfuls cornstarch, 2 tablespoonfuls molasses, 1½ teaspoonfuls salt, 1 tablespoonful China soy, cupful fresh mushrooms.
Cut the pork and chicken into small pieces, put any bones that remain in a cheese-cloth bag, tie it up and drop in pail of cooker. Cover with cold water and let it come very slowly to the boil. Fry out a piece of fat, salt pork in a spider, and brown the meat. Add it to the water in the pail, also the onion, the celery cut in inch lengths, bring to the boiling point, then simmer slowly for one hour. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little water and stir it in. Add the molasses, salt, and soy. Cook ten minutes longer, set the pail, tightly covered, into the cooker; leave it there eight hours. When served, lift out the cheese-cloth bag with the bones. Serve chop suey with boiled rice, Saratoga chips, and toast.
New England Boiled Dinner. a Put the corned beef on to cook at six in the morning if you want it for six-o'clock dinner. Cover with cold water, put on lid securely, and simmer for half an hour. Then set it in the cooker. Pare potatoes, cut up cabbage in quarters, pare some turnips and slice them, and let each vegetable cook separately for ten minutes. Drain and blanch. Lift the meat from the cooker, put the vegetables into the pail, cover, and boil ten minutes. Return to the cooker until six o'clock.
Pot Roast. 4 pound salt pork, 5 pounds round steak, 3 cupfuls boiling water, Salt pepper, and flour.
Rub the meat on all sides with salt, pepper, and flour, fry out salt pork in a spider and brown the meat in it. Set a trivet into the pail of the cooker, pour in 2 cupfuls boiling water, which has been used to rinse the spider, let it boil five minutes, then cook gently on top of the stove for one hour. Remove to the fireless cooker and allow it ten hours. If vegetables are desired, parboil them, lay them under the meat in the gravy, and strain out before it is thickened.
Steamed Pudding. pound beef suet, cupful flour, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon, 1 teaspoonful mace, teaspoonful salt, ½ teaspoonful cloves, pound Sultana raisins, pound currants, pound citron, cupful sugar, 1½ cupfuls soft bread crumbs, 3 eggs, cupful milk.
Chop the suet fine, mix with the flour and spices, then add the fruit, sugar, and bread crumbs. Wet with the milk and eggs, stir hard, and turn the mixture into a greased mold. Set it into the pail of the cooker. Surround with boiling water, give it one hour on the stove ar all night in the cooker.
Stewed Prunes. 1 pound prunes, 1 cupful sugar, 1 cupful water.
Wash the prunes thoroughly, soak for two hours, put them into a gran ite dish, adding the sugar and water.
Cook on top of the stove fifteen minutes, then remove to the pail of the cooker, pour boiling water in until it nearly reaches the top of the pail of prunes, cover tightly. Let the water boil five minutes, then set into the cooker and leave over night. 1 :
Cup Custard. 3 cupfuls milk, cupful sugar, Pinch salt, 3 eggs.
FIRELESS COOKERY Scald the milk, pour it over the sugar and salt, stir in the well-beaten eggs, pour into custard cups, and grate a little nutmeg on top of each.
Set the cups into the pail of the cooker, pour boiling water around them, and boil for ten minutes. Place them in the fireless cooker three hours. If you wish to serve custard with the top browned, set it under the flame of the gas stove for a few minutes. Serve ice-cold.
This page is a fireless-cooker timetable followed by a handful of recipes for it. The fireless cooker was an insulated box with no heat source: food was brought to the boil on the range, then sealed into the box to finish on stored heat alone. That principle is what makes these particular directions unusable today, and it is worth understanding exactly why before reading the rest as culinary history.
- Why the overnight meat holds failAn unheated insulated box loses heat steadily. Four pounds of beef, a whole corned brisket or a boiled ham sealed in for eight to twelve hours passes down through 140F and then sits for hours in the range where Clostridium perfringens and Bacillus cereus spores germinate and multiply. Both survive boiling as spores, so the initial hard boil does not protect the food during the long cooling.
- The custard is the worst caseThe custard -- Cup Custard is boiled ten minutes and then held three hours in falling heat before being served ice-cold. An egg-and-milk mixture given no verified finish temperature and then cooled slowly over hours is a route to Salmonella and to staphylococcal toxin, which is heat-stable and cannot be cooked out later.
- Chop suey and the bone bagPork and chicken are simmered an hour, thickened, then sealed away for eight hours. Poultry and pork held in a slow decline like this are a particular concern, and the cornstarch-thickened liquid insulates the interior further, slowing cooling exactly where it most needs to be fast. If you want these dishes, use a current recipe for a slow cooker or an oven, both of which hold food above 140F continuously.
- SpiderA spider is a cast-iron frying pan, originally one with legs that stood over coals. Wherever the text says spider, read heavy skillet.
- Granite dishGranite or graniteware is speckled enamelled steel, the standard cheap kitchen vessel of the period. Any non-reactive saucepan is the equivalent.
- China soy and Saratoga chipsChina soy is soy sauce, then sold in small bottles as an imported condiment. Saratoga chips are potato chips, named for Saratoga Springs, New York, where they were popularised.
- Blanch, in this bookTo blanch here means to plunge the parboiled vegetables into cold water to stop the cooking and set the colour, not to loosen skins. The trivet in the Pot Roast is simply a rack to keep the meat off the bottom of the pail.
- Missing quantitiesSeveral amounts in the pudding, pot roast and Chop Suey lists have lost their fractions, so the proportions cannot be recovered from this page as printed.
The fireless or insulated cooker was one of the most heavily promoted labour-saving ideas of the years around 1900. Commercial models were wooden or metal chests packed with hay, felt, asbestos or mineral wool, sometimes with soapstone discs heated on the range and dropped in alongside the pail; homemade versions were built from packing crates and newspaper. The appeal was fuel: a coal or wood range had to be stoked and watched, and a device that finished dinner while the fire went out saved both money and hours of a cook's attention, which is why household manuals of this era give the subject a chapter of its own and print timetables like the one at the head of this page. The recipes here are of a piece with that logic, all long-cooking cuts and puddings that reward slow heat: pot roast, corned beef with root vegetables, boiled ham, steamed suet pudding. Chop suey among them is a marker of date, an American-Chinese restaurant dish that had become fashionable enough by the 1900s to be domesticated into general household cookbooks alongside New England boiled dinner. The fireless cooker faded once gas and then electric ranges made low, controlled heat easy to maintain, its principle differing from the modern slow cooker in the crucial respect of merely keeping food from cooling quickly rather than keeping it hot.