However skillful a cook or baker someone is these days, it really doesn’t compare with what cooks in former times, even recent former times, had to contend with. Our ovens and cookers, our microwaves, and all the equipment we have or see on TV shows allow us to be more precise, efficient and accurate, and quicker and easier than ever before.
I have no idea when J. & J. Coleman Ltd of London and Norwich issued their little ‘Book of Cornflour Recipes’ but it has a little section in the introduction on baking:
Baking – The management of the oven is the most important and most difficult thing the cook has to learn. Experience is the only way. Every oven has its characteristics (and very perverse they often seem!) because of differences, in make, fuel, position with regard to draught, etc.
It’s true that experience helps with learning to cook well, but our ovens don’t have the same extreme of difference as they did when this little booklet was published. If I went to another house and used another oven, I’m pretty sure I’d manage – and I certainly wouldn’t have to worry about draughts!
The following hints maybe useful:-
- Always have the oven the required temperature before using. if a coal range is used, make the fire up well and when ready to use push the damper in. If a gas oven, light it about 15 to 20 minutes before using.
- To test the heat of the oven. Sprinkle some flour on a baking tin and put it in the oven. if in three minutes it turns:-
- golden brown – it is a very hot oven suitable for scones and pastry.
- pale brown – – it is a hot oven suitable for buns and small cakes.
- deep yellow – it is a moderate oven suitable for large fruit cakes.
- straw colour – it is a slow oven suitable for finishing off large cakes.
learning how to manage a fire to have it at the right temperature for cooking anything must have been very difficult, no wonder there was the comment about ‘experience is the only way. These days we can set our oven at a temperature, we don’t need to test it as they did before with flour on baking tins. And lastly in this section was a safety warning…
If you have a gas oven see there is a pipe from it to remove the fumes. When lighting the oven leave the door open for one minute to clear it of gas. See that the tin on the floor of the oven has some water in it – this will prevent the things from drying.
Lois Elsden 