Page:The Chinese cook book.djvu/23



In ancient times stoves were very different from now; hence cooking was crude and less elaborate. The food was broiled over coals or buried in hot ashes. The portable stoves of Pompeii which were dug up during the uncovering of the buried city show how these stoves were made. Others were the oven fireplace, the brick oven, and the Franklin stove invented by Benjamin Franklin. The cook-stoves adapted to wood were very different from the gas and electrical appliances of to-day.

It was but a step for primitive man, from baking in hot ashes, or in a covered kettle set on coals, to a simple form of oven. Often one served a community. Sometimes a fire was built directly in the oven, and when it was burned down the oven was swept out and the food put in to be cooked by the heated bricks. The later brick oven, still used in some old houses, had a space underneath for a separate