Keeping your cooker clean

Of all kitchen tasks, cleaning is the most boring, and cleaning the cooker is the most ghastly. If there’s more than one person using the kitchen, then it’s often the case that one of them is more clean and tidy minded than the other… and it is also an unwritten law that whenever the cooker most needs cooking that is when visitors are likely to call and follow you into the kitchen as you make a cup of tea…

I shouldn’t complain really; modern cookers are designed to allow easy cleaning, some ovens have automatic cleaning settings (I have never had one but guess the temperature is turned up high so everything burns off) The materials used for the cooker are often coated with something which means wiping spilled things off is easy, and we have almost hundreds of products to use in different ways to clean all sorts of spillages.

In 1937, Elizabeth Craig wrote a book for the British Electrical Development Association, ‘The Way to a Good table, Electric Cookery’. Elizabeth was a remarkable woman; she was one of eight children of a Scottish Free Church minister and his wife, who lived in Memus, a small village near Kirriemuir in Angus. She became one of the most famous and even influential cookery writers in Britain during her career. She lived to be ninety-seven years old, a grand old age.

It is easy to scoff at having a cookery book which gives instruction on how to clean a cooker, but I imagine that a new electric cooker was a very expensive purchase, and people would want it to last as well and as long as possible. We have such a careless throw-away society these days!

Her instructions start with a firm reminder to make sure the cooker is switched off, and a note about the wisdom of reading the instructions before removing any of the parts pf the cooker! There were no sprays, cleaning gels, foams or creams in those days, just soap and maybe scouring powder.

Wring  a cloth out of hot soapy water, and wipe any grease of the enamelled hob. if this treatment does not remove hardened food, dip cloth in a cleansing powder and rub gently, then wipe, with a clean wet cloth and dry.
clean oven while still hot, after cooking meat, with a cloth wrung out of hot soapy water to remove splashes or spots of fat from the sides.