110 year old wood cookstove

[Badfish740]

Last night my wife was flipping channels and as she went through I saw a glimpse of what I thought looked like someone feeding wood into a stove "GO BACK! GO BACK!" (only a hearth.com member right?) I said. It was the local PBS affiliate airing a show called "Fannies Last Supper," which is about a guy from a cooking show who recreated an authentic 11 course Victorian era Christmas dinner utilizing Victorian era methods, which of course included cooking with wood. It was pretty neat watching the cooks prepare all of the old dishes in a kitchen at a constant 95 degrees from the heat of the massive 1880s era stove. Check out some of the pictures here:

http://www.fannieslastsupper.com/in...llery&view=category&id=4:downstairs&Itemid=67

The name on the stove is "Cyrus Carpenter & Co - Boston". Googling that found this:

http://www.antiquesjournal.com/Pages04/Monthly_pages/april05/kitchens.html

Pretty cool...

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Sounds like that would be a neat show.

 

[48rob]

Neat!

I learned how to load and cook on a wood range many years ago.
I remember the wood we fed the range for cooking was much smaller though!

Rob

 

[VCBurner]

The wife and I have always loved those stoves and wish we had enough space to have one in our own kitchen!

If you like antique stoves try this site

http://www.barnstablestove.com/index.htm

 

[breathebeast]

Very cool. I'm just reading At Home by Bill Bryson, and the way he describes the work that used to be done in the old kitchens...well, next time I'll feeling tired I really want to watch this show to give me perspective!

Interesting to note that when I was in China, lots of people cooked over fires - don't know if they're called wood stoves over there, I definitely wasn't paying the kind of attention that I would now. The whole point of woks being shaped the way they are was to maximize exposure to the heat of the fire (up the sides of the pot).

I also lived in a house with an old cook stove for a year. It had been used 20 years ago or so to actually makes meals when a young family lived there...sadly, the furnace broke down shortly after I arrived, and we were more concerned with keeping the house at least at 45 overnight by using the terribly leaky, scrounged and small iron woodstoves than about testing out the cook stove (though I still feel like that's a sign that work keeps me way busier than it should). I did, at least, learn how to build a fire in a non-EPA wood stove that year....

 

[joshlaugh]

I have been slowly looking for a turn of the century wood cook stove like a Crawford or Glenwood. I finally convinced my wife of how nice and effective it would be heating the kitchen which can be up to 15 degrees cooler than the other rooms in my house and would go nicely with our old Victorian house. I have to just figure out how to install it and feed it along with my other 2 wood stoves. But I always like to see and hear about others using them!

 

[Bobbin]

I heard a story on NPR about that guy. I think they said the stove was so hot that they could barely bear to be next to it. There was another funny bit about making gelatin from calves' feet, I think. I have a few well-worn cookbooks that came from my grandfather's cousin's estate. She cared for his children and managed the household for him after the death of his wife in '32. In it, are contained very specific notes on what type of wood is best for what recipes, sp. those that require a very hot oven. It's fascinating to read. (thanks, I'll stick with the GE Profile gas range!).