Vigo County Historical Society

Cooking became easier with gas stove

According to my grandmother’s cookbook, you had to get up at 4 a.m. to be able to start the fire in the big wood range cooking stove to prepare for the day’s activities.

Times were changing with gas being installed in Terre Haute, with Indiana being one of the first to have piped-in gas. Cooking was becoming easier.

In the Hoosier Homemaker section of the Vigo County Historical Museum stands a regal slender four-legged gas stove. This has a beautiful creme color enamel coating and is equipped with four knobs to control cooking heat and one extra know for oven control.

The name reading Robertshaw with the oven regulator reading 250 degrees to 55 degrees. There is a small shelf with flower decorations above the cooking area, which has a large metal tray covering for the four-burner unit when the stove is not in use. A drawer is underneath the burners to hold pan lids and extra cooking utensils.

This gas stove was an improvement in time saved and also on back-breaking labor, such as hauling water for the reservoir of the wood range and lugging wooden logs from outside to heat the stove. In the 1920s and ‘30s, a lot of produce was canned with the homemaker always inviting friends to see how many more jars of vegetables or fruit she had just put up.

I was a fairly new bride when my husband planted a large garden of vegetables. I was up at 6 a.m. picking, stringing, snapping fresh green beans. After washing and filling 16 jars with the beans I was ready to can.

I decided on the open water bath process. I placed a large galvanized tub on top of my four gas burners, filled the tub with water and immersed my beans.

I asked a relative how long to boil the water. So I boiled the water for 30 minutes.

Later in the day, as we started dinner, I hears this loud explosion, glass flying everywhere, then a second explosion, more glass. We immediately left the house for several hours, arriving home to find only two jars still standing. I was later told I should have heated water for three hours--30 minutes was for a pressure cooker. Needless to say, I haven’t done much canning in 50 years.

Before World War II with chicken being a constant--the first Sunday was fried chicken, the next Sunday, chicken and dumplings, the next Sunday, chicken and noodles--the chicken had to be slaughtered, feathers plucked, even the tiny pin feathers still had to be removed.

To do this, you had to light one end of a rolled up paper and hold it under the chicken as you rotated it. With the gas stove, you held the chicken slightly above the small gas flame, and quickly moved the bird back and forth removing small pin feathers. This was called "To singe."

This type of gas stove truly helped the American homemaker to more free time. This magic stove may be seen at the museum.