Though sometimes connected to the chimney mass, such ranges might also be given their own space. Note the eponymous Rumford Roaster beside the hearth.Ī kitchen equipped according to Rumford’s ideas was dominated by a large range built of brick masonry. Stunningly advanced for 1807, the centerpiece of the Rundlet-May House kitchen in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is a Rumford range-a brick firebox with iron top (now gone) and registers to control heat. Better known today as the inventor of the Thermos Bottle and the fireplace that bears his name, Rumford’s particular genius in the kitchen was to take the cooking fire out of the open hearth and put it in a box.
Rumford was an engineering pioneer who made the first scientific studies of heat transfer while perfecting methods for boring cannons. Credit goes to Benjamin Thompson, better known as Count Rumford, who designed the earliest such cooking devices to scientifically control heat as early as the 1790s. The kitchen of the 1907 Evans House in California is dominated by a 1926 Smoothtop gas range, promoted for its compact cooking surface “that makes possible smaller kitchens.” The two-tone color and oven heat regulators were other breakthroughs for the era.įrom a cooking perspective, the ingredients of the modern kitchen came together only about 200 years ago with the first appearance of a true range-that is, a flat-topped heat source combined with an oven. In fact, one way to understand kitchens of the past, and gain design ideas for an old-house kitchen today, is to examine the development of this remarkable appliance through its changing fuels, construction, and design. In old-house kitchens, ranges are central not only to their function but to their historical ambiance as well. Nonetheless, the kitchen as we know it today has been the heart of the modern house for nearly 150 years, and all through this time the heart of the modern kitchen has been the cookstove or range.
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