Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/827

Rh the oven which revolves easily when it is desired to turn a pan that is set upon it. Another has a round piece cut out of the upper side of each cover and held in place by screws, its object being to prevent cracking. Still another has one cover made up of concentric rings so as to furnish five different-sized holes. Mrs. Rorer exhibits at her lectures a range having a perforated oven door lined with wire gauze. This, she says, enables meats to be really roasted in an oven instead of being baked. A range with which is combined a hot-water house-heating apparatus, the invention of a Chicago woman, is also shown in the lecture room and in the Manufactures Building. A long line of cooking apparatus for gas is shown, at one end of which is a simple hot plate and at the other a range with baking oven, broiling oven, dish warmer, and water back. The larger ranges have a flue to carry off the products of combustion. There is also a variety of gasolene and kerosene stoves. One novelty in this line is the parlor-lamp stove. It consists of an ornamental tripod supporting a top on which the cooking is done, an ordinary large parlor lamp being placed inside the base. When used for lighting, the lamp is set on top of the tripod. Among the kitchen appliances used in the New York Working-man's Home is the Aladdin oven, invented by Mr. Edward Atkinson, and fully described in this magazine about four years ago.

The greatest novelty in cooking appliances at the fair is unquestionably the apparatus for cooking by electricity, shown in operation in the gallery of the Electricity Building. The electric current is conducted into plates of enamel, where it meets with resistance and is converted into heat. These plates are attached to specially constructed ovens, broilers, griddles, flatirons, etc. An ordinary stewpan, coffee or tea pot, or steam cooker may be heated on the "disk heater." An outfit of articles necessary for a private house costs $60, or $77.50 if a heater for a kitchen boiler is included. Electricity has the same advantages over coal that gas has; its advantages over gas depend upon the fact that combustion, with its needs and limitations, is wholly done away with. There are no products of complete or accidentally imperfect combustion, there is not even a slight loss of heat into the room or up the flue. The strongest points of electrical cooking are comfort and convenience, but claims are made for it also on the score of economy. It is said that the cost of cooking by electricity is less than the cost with coal and about the same as where fuel-gas is used. This is on the supposition that the electricity is furnished at half the price charged for lighting.

Kitchen utensils are no less well represented than are stoves and ranges. The main exhibit of these is in the Manufactures Building. Among them may be mentioned stamped ware