A few days ago I ordered something from Etsy (I’ll be posting about that something later) and the seller sent along a free gift:
…a very cool 1949 cookbook for new owners of Hotpoint ranges. It has some recipes and a few very cool vintage pictures of that mid-century type with colors that don’t really seem real.
Then, on Wednesday night I was browsing the Seattle Municipal Archives photostream on Flickr, when I came across this picture, captioned “Marilyn demonstrating electric stove, 1949”:
It’s the same stove!
Jason and I once lived in a rental house that had a similar stove to this one, but I can’t recall if it was the same one, exactly. It did have the multiple ovens, which I loved. I think it may have also had a feature of this stove which most stoves don’t have anymore: the “Thrift Cooker.”
Apparently the Thrift Cooker was a built-in slow cooker, recessed into the surface of the stove. Pretty useful, really, though it means you have one less burner available. You don’t need counter space for a Crock-Pot this way, and how often do most people use all four burners at once? (The ad here seems to indicate you can use the Thrift Cooker as a surface burner too!)
Here’s a Life magazine ad for a similar Hotpoint stove from a couple of years earlier. And here’s a 1937 article on using the frying basket that came with the Thrift Cooker.
I am old enough to remember my Mother using the thrift cooker or as she used to say it was the “deep well”. So many of our meals came from that well. It was clean and out of the way and there was no need to have to worry about a place to store the slow cooker.
I too just happened to come upon an old booklet titled Simplified Cooking Instructions for Using Your General Electric Range that also contained all the things you mentioned and I would gladly change my electric range for it any day. I think the date on this is 1954.
Sometimes new is not necessarily the best JMO
Thrift cookers appear to have been common for 30 years or so. I wonder why they stopped making stoves with them. Or did they? I haven’t seen any recent stoves with them, but I suppose there might be one somewhere.
my mother in law had a Hotpoint 1940s range and used to make a meat spaghetti recipe from the “recipe” book that came with her range. She has lost the recipe and would appreciate having it again. One thing she remembers is that the last item on the recipe is to add a “clove” to the spaghetti.
Any chance, this recipe is in your Hotpoint recipe book?
Thank you
My Mom just passed away and I found a Thrift Cooker recipe page. The Spaghetti and Meat Sauce recipe is on the page and it calls for 2 whole cloves. Hope this helps.