How We Cook: Then VS Now

The image of you holding an Easy Bake Oven gives me serious doubts that I'm actually awake.

This may seem off topic, but as someone with hearing difficulties, I greatly appreciate the volume and clarity in these videos. I don't have to turn on the subtitles to understand and enjoy them. Thank you. And this was great!

Biggest thing the raised hearth did, was take the back-ache out of stooping in a fireplace!!

A video over apartment living throughout the centuries would be interesting. Cooking, eating, how they were setup.

We see examples of ancient Roman "stew stoves" as Jon describes along outdoor boulevards. This is how ancient Roman street food was generally cooked.

In addition to the water jacket, my stove had drying racks so if you came in with wet small items you could warm or dry them. Great for frozen socks and gloves.

The thumbnail for this video is perfection

The raised hearth must have reduced back pain by 80%.

Free range, organic, sourced locally, farm to table, eating according to the seasons. They sure were 18th century foodies.

As a little kid in 90' I still remember there was cast iron stove when my family moved in to the old apartament.

The raised hearth looks like my ideal outdoor kitchen lol

Even in the 1950s, many people in rural North America didn't have power in their homes. Wood stoves, or cooking over fire was the only way people could prepare meals. Drying and canning were also essential for food preparation. Long ago, learning to cook was essential for survival. There were no fast food outlets around back then. This was very interesting. Cheers!

I grew up in an old house in rural Australia. We had an old wood fired stove/oven that also heated the water for the hot water system. It was great in winter. It would warm the front rooms of the house, heat the water and be the cooking place. Cooking cakes was a bit hit and miss because there was no way to regulate the heat other than add more wood or light it early in the day to cook a cake in the evening. Sometimes the water was so hot you could hear bubbling in the pipes. We were taught from a young age to be extra careful when turning on the hot water taps. Wood stoves are a lot of work to maintain and there is always a fine layer of soot building up somewhere.

"With our modern kitchens we cook less and less." I got a good chuckle out of that one! I can't help but think of the commercials I'm seeing lately (I won't mention the brand!) for a certain pre-prepared meal-in-a-box with a push-button robo-oven that the consumer needs very little effort on their part to use. "OK," I say to myself, "And just WHAT are you gonna do if there's a power failure?" Hey, if all else fails I've got my sterno stove and last-resort fireplace. It's wouldn't be fun but I'd manage. Great show Jon! And a FAST 16 minutes!

Ironically with our exceptionally convenient gas and electric hobs etc., in the UK one of the most desirable things for a country house is an Aga - the cast iron range cooker that's the direct descendant of the earliest metal wood stoves.

The precursor to the easy bake oven was a mini cast iron stove. Toy versions were first created in the mid 19th century. Unfortunately, children were seriously injured and killed using the working models.

The farm my folks retired to had a big Kalamazoo wood stove with a plate/food warmer box on top, four lids, with one being a three ring, 9" one, a stove with a dial heat indicator on the door and a water heater on the right side. Although in perfect shape and beautiful with its white and blue enamel decorations, my Mom had always cooked on a gas stove and disliked all the fuss involved with burning wood. So the stove went in the barn and we got a bottle gas stove from Sears...Dad had to install a radiator in the kitchen so it wouldn't get cold in winter...

The Easy-Bake Oven was introduced in 1963 by Kenner. The original used a pair of ordinary incandescent light bulbs as a heat source; so our ancestors had it rough. By 1997, more than 16 million Easy-Bake Ovens had been sold. I do so enjoy learning ancient history --- don't you?

An interesting variant is the tile stove. Basically a masonry oven with small fire in it. Useful in winter as the masonry would retain the heat and help warm the house at night.

I'll never think of "Hickory Smoked" anything, the same way again. Wonderfully eye-opening, as always.