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The idea of standardization was first introduced locally with the Frankfurt kitchen, but later defined new in the "Swedish kitchen" (Svensk köksstandard, Swedish kitchen standard). The equipment used remained a standard for years to come: hot and cold water on tap and a kitchen sink and an electrical or gas stove and oven. Not much later, the refrigerator was added as a standard item. The concept was refined in the "Swedish kitchen" using unit furniture with wooden fronts for the kitchen cabinets. Soon, the concept was amended by the use of smooth synthetic door and drawer fronts, first in white, recalling a sense of cleanliness and alluding to sterile lab or hospital settings, but soon after in more lively colors, too. Some years after the Frankfurt Kitchen, Poggenpohl presented the "reform kitchen" in 1928 with interconnecting cabinets and functional interiors. The reform kitchen was a forerunner to the later unit kitchen and fitted kitchen.
Unit construction since its introduction has defined the development of the modern kitchen. Pre-manufactured modules, using mass manufacturing techniques developed during WW2, greatly brought down the cost of a kitchen. Units which are kept on the floor are called "floor units", "floor cabinets", or "base cabinets" on which a kitchen worktop – originally often Formica and often now made of granite, marble, tile or wood – is placed. The units which are held on the wall for storage purposes are termed as "wall units" or "wall cabinets". In small areas of kitchen in an apartment, even a "tall storage unit" is available for effective storage. In cheaper brands, all cabinets are kept a uniform color, normally white, with interchangeable doors and accessories chosen by the customer to give a varied look. In more expensive brands, the cabinets are produced matching the doors' colors and finishes, for an older more bespoke look.
After WW1, kitchens were changing in America, Britain and beyond. With more women filling the workforce than ever before, the need for nifty, time-saving cooking devices was paramount. Enter the automatic toaster. A pop-up toaster that could brown bread on both sides at once was patented early in the Twenties and, by 1926, it was on shelves under the name ‘Toastmaster’.
The KitchenAid was another slick gadget that sped things up for time-poor women. Mixing dough and batter by hand can be arm-aching work and – for those who could afford it – the new KitchenAid, an automatic stand mixer, meant waving goodbye to this toilsome task. It was invented in 1919 but, by 1927, the company had introduced their “model G” mixer: a lighter and more compact version of its predecessor that sold like hot cakes.
Beginning in the
1870s, kerosene stoves became fixtures in many
US farm kitchens, as
households shifted from wood or coal to oil fuel. Surveys during the
1930s reveal that, outside of cities,
oil was afar
more common cooking fuel than
gas. Yet the literature on farm and rural women says little about this important energy transition before electricity and gas. For
rural and
farm households in the
USA, where the
alternative was coal or wood, oil offered significant benefits, and to farm women especially it was a godsend. Oil was
cleaner, quicker, cooler, lighter, and more portable; it changed women's work patterns and improved their economic status. Thus, focusing on the transition from wood and coal to electricity and gas in home heating and cooking misses a step. Moreover, as this story reveals,
energy transitions differed between
men and women and were contingent upon
economic status and
place of residence. Especially for
women in rural and farm households,
kerosene provided an
important bridge fuel to the newer age of gas and electricity.
In
America in the
early 1930s, gas range manufacturers found a way to hide the gas manifold behind the sheet metal body, and cookers on spindly cabriole legs quickly assumed a new marketing persona as the chest of drawers range. Covers that pulled down over the burner left the appliance hardly recognizable as a stove, according to ads. In the tight times of the Depression, some manufacturers suggested their ranges might even double as tables. Drawer-type handles and decorative legs continued the notion that ranges were furniture—even down to paint finishes that aped materials like marble or wood.
A
portable stove is a
cooking stove specially designed to be portable and lightweight, used in
camping,
picnicking,
backpacking, or other use in remote locations where an easily transportable means of
cooking or heating is needed. Portable stoves can be used in diverse situations, such as for outdoor food service and
catering and in
field hospitals.
Since the invention of the portable stove in the
19th century, a wide variety of designs and models have seen use in a number of different applications. Portable stoves can be broken down into several broad categories based on the type of fuel used and stove design: unpressurized stoves that use solid or liquid fuel placed in the burner before ignition; stoves that use a volatile liquid fuel in a pressurized burner; bottled gas stoves; and gravity-fed "spirit" stoves.
The
Primus stove, the first
pressurized-burner kerosene (paraffin) stove, was developed in
1892 by
Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist, a factory mechanic in
Stockholm. The stove was based on the design of the hand-held
blowtorch; Lindqvist’s patent covered the burner, which was turned upward on the stove instead of outward as on the blowtorch. The same year, Lindqvist partnered with
Johan Viktor Svenson [
sv] and established J.V. Svenson’s Kerosene Stove Factory for manufacturing the new stoves which were sold under the name
Primus. The first model was the No.1 stove, which was quickly followed by a number of similarly-designed stoves of different models and sizes.
The efficient Primus stove quickly earned a reputation as a reliable and durable stove in everyday use, and it performed especially well under adverse conditions. While many other companies also made portable stoves of a similar design to the Primus, this style is often
generically referred to as a "Primus" stove, regardless of the manufacturer.
The
AGA was an iconic contraption born of the 1920s – and again, its aim was to make cooking less fiddly, fussy and time guzzling. Originally developed to burn coke or anthracite, the AGA cooker was invented in
1922 by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist
Gustaf Dalén (1869–1937), who was employed as the chief engineer of the Swedish
AGA company (
Swedish Aktiebolaget Svenska Gasaccumulator, English Swedish Gas Accumulator, Limited). Dalén lost his sight in an explosion while developing his earlier invention, a porous
substrate for storing gases,
Agamassan. Forced to stay at home, Dalén discovered that his wife was exhausted by cooking - fatigued and frazzled from using her unwieldy cooker.
His solution was the AGA, a cast-iron oven that stayed hot continuously – it was a quick hit, arriving in Britain and beyond in the late twenties and rising further in popularity throughout subsequent decades. Although blind, he set out to develop a new stove that was capable of a range of culinary techniques and easy to use. The AGA was a quick hit, arriving in Britain and beyond in the late Twenties and rising further in popularity throughout subsequent decades.
Adopting the principle of heat storage, he combined a heat source, two large hotplates and two ovens into one unit: the AGA Cooker. The cooker was introduced to the United Kingdom in 1929, and was manufactured there under licence in the early 1930s.
A small, traditional two-oven AGA running on gas will use approximately
2,530 watts;
22,200 kilowatt-hours per year (perhaps
half that
if switched off during the summer months). The
average standard gas oven and hob uses
580 kilowatt-hours per year (66 watts), only
2.6% of the AGA's consumption. AGA's own figures for expected energy consumption for their two-oven AGA support this
criticism, suggesting average consumption of
40 litres of
kerosene or
diesel fuel per week,
60 litres of
propane gas per week,
425 kW⋅h of natural gas per week, or
220 kW⋅h/week for the electric models. This would indicate that the
smallest traditional two-oven gas AGA providing simple cooking functions (i.e. no water heating or central heating) consumes
thirty-eight times as much as a
standard gas oven and hob, almost as much gas in a
week as a standard gas oven and hob in
nine months.
AGA has provided an analysis of their own, which includes the steps taken to reduce energy consumption. Owners often talk about how the AGA actually makes their homes more energy efficient, as the
AGA does a number of jobs, such as replacing several
radiators, a
tumble dryer,
electric kettle and
toaster and is not simply a cooker.
The AGA's popularity in certain parts of British society (owners of medium to large
country houses) led to the coining of the term ‘
AGA Saga’ in the 1990s, referring to a genre of fiction set amongst stereotypical upper-middle-class society.
Faster, more economical and easier to wipe down, the electric oven was a kitchen game changer, and it was actually invented back in the 19th century. However, it wasn’t until the 1930s that they began to crop up in more and more British and American kitchens. In Britain in particular, the birth of a National Grid in the '20s meant that, in this decade, more households were connected to power than ever before.
Fast-forward to the '40s, and a post-WW2 technology boom was transforming kitchens at a more rapid pace than ever before. The first home refrigerator was introduced way back in the 1910s, but it was the preserve of the very wealthiest in society.
