American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
Another remarkable feature of this store is the extension-top, on which
is placed a water reservoir, constantly heated by the smoke as it
passes from the stove, through one or two uniting passages, to the
smoke-pipe. Under this is placed a closet for warming and keeping hot
the dishes, vegetables, meats, etc., while preparing for dinner. It
is also very useful in drying fruit; and when large baking is required,
a small appended pot for charcoal turns it into a fine large oven,
that bakes as nicely as a brick oven.
Another useful appendage is a common tin oven, in which roasting can
be done in front of the stove, the oven-doors being removed for the
purpose. The roast will be done as perfectly as by an open fire.
This stove is furnished with pipes for heating water, like the
water-back of ranges, and these can be taken or left out at pleasure.
So also the top covers, the baking-stool and pot, and the summer-back,
bottom, and side-casings can be used or omitted as preferred.
[Illustration Fig 37]
Fig. 37 exhibits the stove completed, with all its appendages, as they
might be employed in cooking for a large number.
Its capacity, convenience, and economy as a stove may be estimated by
the following fact: With proper management of dampers, one
ordinary-sized coal-hod of anthracite coal will, for twenty-four hours,
keep the stove running, keep seventeen gallons of water hot at all
hours, bake pies and puddings in the warm closet, heat flat-irons under
the back cover, boil tea-kettle and one pot under the front cover,
bake bread in the oven, and cook a turkey in the tin roaster in front.
The author has numerous friends, who, after trying the best ranges,
have dismissed them for this stove, and in two or three years cleared
the whole expense by the saving of fuel.
The remarkable durability of this stove is another economic feature.
For in addition to its fine castings and nice-fitting workmanship, all
the parts liable to burn out are so protected by linings, and other
contrivances easily renewed, that the stove itself may pass from one
generation to another, as do ordinary chimneys. The writer has visited
in families where this stove had been in constant use for eighteen and
twenty years, and was still as good as new. In most other families the
stoves are broken, burnt-out, or thrown aside for improved patterns
every four, five, or six years, and sometimes, to the knowledge of the
writer, still oftener.
Another excellent point is that, although it is so complicated in its
various contrivances as to demand intelligent management in order to
secure all its advantages, it also can be used satisfactorily even
when the mistress and maid are equally careless and ignorant of its
distinctive merits. To such it offers all the advantages of ordinary
good stoves, and is extensively used by those who take no pains to
understand and apply its peculiar advantages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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