I was like, I know, I was thank you know, I see tomatoes on the calendar.
I know me too. I love I just love that.
I'm I'm learning so much every day, which is like my favorite thing, and then just just sharing it and you're as crazy about this stuff as I am.
So Oh my god.
My name is Evel Longoria and I am my deraon and Welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast.
That explores our past and present through food.
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages.
From our culture.
So make yourself at home, even Brichel. I am so excited as usual. Mike and I are talking about how every week we sit down to do these episodes and we just are so excited about the topic every time, every single time. So excited because today's topic is like food adjacent.
It is you need it if you're a foodie and if you cook.
But I've always been fascinated with like how things evolved into what they are today, and so today's topic is about the oven and the history of the oven.
Did you have an easy bake oven? I wish it was my dream toy. I never had one.
I didn't get it. I never you got you have a bunch of sisters. I would have imagined, well, that's the thing.
I got the Flea Mark hand me down version, and you know it came with like one packic to make, like it came with like the one cupcake right that light would make and so I had to like actually make reels. I wanted to make real stuff inside of it. And it's not really strong enough for like repeat using it's.
A light bulb.
I mean, my dad was always paranoid that I was going to get that I was going to burn myself.
He never got it, and it was so heartbreaking.
But my next door neighbor had one, and I always every time I went over, I just wanted to do easy bake opan and she's like, no.
Let's go for a bike ride, let's go whatever, climb trees. And I was like, no, let's bake. But I had that let's make everything in there.
I put everything in there and it would never cook, right, But it did cook. I mean it was a proper little oven for two second it had this little light. Then yeah, I just felt like it was such a I don't know, it was such a toy that.
I was like, oh, that's cool.
It could teach kids about cooking, but it was really genderized. I feel I felt like it was only for little girls and you know, be a good wife and the housewife and go learn on this starter oven, so.
You totally prepared for your life.
Yes, and the marketing was definitely that it came out in nineteen sixty three. When we think about like nineteen sixties marketing, it's like the mad Men era, right, It's all of these men that are just coming up with this stuff. So it first came out in this This
sales executive of a toy company called counter Products. He was inspired by New York City pretzel vendors and the little ovens that they had, So his development team designed a light bulb powered toy that would actually work, so you could actually bake.
In these things. Yeah. And so because it heated the little I didn't heat up it did.
I didn't think it heated up to three hundred and fifty degrees.
I didn't think so either, But that was what they were saying, that it heated up.
That's what it said.
Yeah, and that's why my dad was terrified that I was going to burn myself and yeah, you know, but I know it wasn't very hot.
I remember the reason I didn't get one is because it was a high price. It was like sixteen dollars back then, which was like am I for three months was twenty dollars or something. So sixteen dollars was pretty pricey back then, and it was that'd be like more than one hundred and sixty dollars today.
Yeah, can't imagine it was that toy was.
It was a curee success and it like sold five hundred thousand units in the first year and so they tripled production the following year. But I guess that marketing to the little girls worked.
It worked.
It totally worked because if the nineteen sixties, you know, they advertised it on Saturday morning cartoons and she was like, I like, you see, so of course you just want this, And it was like their slogan was just like moms, bake your cake and eat it too, and knew it was like pink.
And purple, and the packaging.
It had the little girl is baking and the little boy is consuming. It was very much like this is your role, so you know who's part of this ad campaign? So I turned this like mundane household task of baking into something into play, into play.
I didn't even know there was a National Toy Hall of Fame. It's so cool. I want to know what else.
Obviously this is for iconic toy is probably the Barbie and the Big Wheel. But the Easy Bake Oven was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame because it sold twenty three million units.
Eight I know it owns it now, hasbro owns it now, and now it's a little bit more democratic. It's not pink and purple, but there's some blue and some yellow in there. And they're boys and girls that are, you know, baking. So yeah, so it's just it has evolved with the times.
I will tell you.
The bigger deal that happened in our household was the day we got a micro way.
Do you remember that? I remember that. That wasn't how a big deal.
I just remember it was like, wow, wow, this little thing can reheat and my aunt in Mexico City would make everything in it and it was just kind of gross.
But then it's like is this safe? Is it? It's just like but it was like a big thing on the counter.
It was like, do you remember when you, because yeah, we it was my dad was excited about it, oddly because he you know, we lived on the ranch.
We ate from the ground, so everything was made from scratch, and so when we got it, I was like, yeah, but what do you cooking it? Like? I was so confusible when it came with a little cookbook and one of the first things and there was eggs, and so I remember my dad cracking an egg and doing the thing and putting it in there. And then and then it you know, changed, and we were like ah, and we wouldn't stand near it.
Yes, we were like back away, back away.
And because of that, of that, I never used it, and it really just was this black box in our kitchen.
But my dad was very excited about it.
And then later it kind of just involved to reheat the leftovers we cooked it.
It was just the reheater.
I feel like that's how it was in my house from the beginning, to reheater or something that you used to make popcorn, right, But that and I feel like we we actually talked about the microwave when we did our popcorn episode, so it the first micro microwave oven was called the Radar Range and it goes all the way back.
To nineteen forty six.
But it was this huge thing and it was super expensive, so it wasn't you know, it wasn't for home use. And these early microwave versions were used in hotels and restaurants, and it wasn't until this company called Raytheon bought it that it became smaller and more affordable. And this is in the nineteen sixties, but it didn't really become common until the eighties, which is when our families you know, got one. And it changed when cooking was supposed to be.
The whole think about the culture in that moment as well, like you know, women are working, uh, kids are.
Latchkey, like that was the other thing that we'd used.
I used to we used to heat heat up like butt pockets or something, you know, when we got home or something.
But yeah, it definitely transformed the household because the way society was changing. Society was changing and it changed like cooking. This until then, this whole idea of oh, cooking should take time and it should be this whole you know thing. What people didn't have time, so it's a sort of collapsed time. And this idea of speed, its speed became normal, you know.
And also the fact that it doesn't brown or crisp like that's that was that's my thing about not cooking. And my glass y egg is great. It's jelly like and it's easy to eat that out of the microwave. But that was why early critics complained about it, because the boot that you could cook in there was like pale or unfinished, and it just was not very aesthetic. So I think, you know, cooking is a craft too. I don't think the microwave really put a dent in that.
But the traditional cooking that requires tending and stirring and eating. Those things still need that stuff. Like if you're making a fly, it does need to rise, it does need to you.
Know, crisp on the top.
And so but this like pressing buttons and something being ready, that was pretty liberating.
It was for some people. It was liberating for a lot of people. It was liberating. For other people, it felt like of this loss of skill and this loss of ritual, you know, the time and the care.
So that was just no longer there. So it was kind of an able ledged sword.
Yeah, And like I said, as a latch geek itter like coming home by yourself. The microwave also supported this idea of individualized eating. I'm going to eat at six and you can eat it eight, and shifting.
The idea of really the family dinner.
And you know that it was like the TV the TV metal trays, TV dinners, what was it.
What were they called TV dinner, TV dinners? Yeah, they were called TV dinners TV dinners, and in the metal trays. Then you would heat them up and I try to heat up on my easy bake oven.
Uh.
I was like, I don't want a cupcake, I want meat. It didn't work.
But this kind of like moving away from the family dinner was was interesting and uh and it never really replaced the oven.
It really didn't know.
Yeah, but it kind of redefined in the eighties. It kind of redefined what counted as real cooking. It normalized convenience and normalized this individual eating.
It just really changed everything I did. It changed the game. Yeah, I use it today.
I only use my microw with today to make popcorn, which I know, which you shouldn't just.
Because the bags full of stuff. Yeah, the bags I guess inside. Yeah, everything's killing I know. I always say something's gonna kill me.
Let the tachin and valentina that I'm putting on a bango that I'm putting on the popcorn.
Definitely that bag.
Right, it's not the hole that I'm putting in my stomach with all of the acid.
I just used them to reheat coffee. Oh yeah, I do. That's I do. That's but you know these look at this.
This is my fire the fire King vintage cups. These are vintage and old because these are the ones you could put in the oven. So house in the nineteen fifties people would heat reheat their coffee in the oven, so these can go in the oven.
No way, I've never seen those. We're doing a.
What do you we're doing when of dinnerware. We're doing an episode of that next year for those of you listening. Eva showing me this beautiful coffee moth that's like Eric scent.
If there doesn't go and everybody knows it.
If you know that it comes in jade and this orange eor doesn't color. That's it's called fire King and it's a brand that that it was, and they had bowls and plates and because you could put them in the oven. Wow, I've never seen to the microwave what you can only find them like I'm eBay and vintage shops and I have a whole coat.
This is what I asked for Christmas. When people are like, what do you want it?
But go get so people give me like one cup one who what is it called again?
The fire fire King, fire King, I'm gonna look for it. It's beautif.
This revolutionized that the household in the fifties as well.
Okay, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Well let's talk about this idea of revolutionizing. So this time about when humans first started to cook with fire instead of just over fire. So this is way before the easy bake oven in the microwave. This kind of transformed life humanity.
Really, I've always been fascinated with when humans started cooking with fire.
Have you broat up Safety Safety and Nukins? Yeah, by Yvonne.
Amazing book though, I mean dense, but like it's the history of evolution. And then there's like when fire really changed our evolution because we started eating meat and we started cooking our meat, and so that I've.
Always been fascinated.
And then I've always been fascinated because in Spain, one of the oldest Dumblans is there.
I mean I went to a restaurant there.
This is the oldest oven of Europe or similar, I never know, and it's a restaurant that the restaurant is built around.
This old looking hole, right, and I was like that was the first Like what year was that?
So I've always been like fascinated about about, you know, the history of cooking with fire, because we didn't used to before fire.
Yeah, but what was it like a million years ago or yeah, like prehistory.
I mean evidence of cooking over an opa fire dates at least four hundred thousand, but probably up to million years ago. And there sites like this Wonderwork Cave in South Africa, so just early people were eating or were roasting meats and tubers directly on embers. And so this idea of cooking with fire, using fire to heat containers, to boil water to bake and enclosed spaces that came
much later. And there's like early pottery found in China dating approximately twenty thousand years ago marks this major turning point because this allowed people to boil, stew and extract nutrients in different ways. And we're going to talk about that more when we do our dinnerware thing because this idea of the oven and pottery kind of goes hand in hand, which is super interesting.
Yeah, but it's interesting because there's fire.
Fire changed our species because first it was just to stay warm, right, like like.
Okay, fire, We're just going to stay warm.
And then there was an era of controlled fire, which was like, oh you know, because it was just you know, fire, and then like controlled use of fire, right, and then it was the evidence of cooking. And so it's so interesting how like, you know, if you look at these these anthropology studies and things like that, whether it is about pottery or the first dishware that they used to boil, the discrepancy because some didn't eat, some more just using it for like hot water and warmth, and then some
were way more some species would made more advance. But the home or erectus to the neanderthal in to the I mean, it's crazy, it's been. It is so fascinating to me. You got to read Sapiens. It's okay, one of the best books ever.
We're going to link to it because yes, there's just so much to learn from this and these are things that we don't really think about, right.
It's like, oh, the fire. I think about this all the time.
Yeah, that there was a fire that happened end and you've all's booked. It was like a fire that like burned the forest and there was remains of animals and they saw birds picking at it and eating it and they were like oh and that's how they found like, oh you could cook meat, but you could.
Coascinating animals anyway. Yeah, it's so fascinating.
So yeah, so by I know, it's what this whole thing is like, oh fire, heat.
Oh my gosh.
Run and then oh but look, so there's by about ten thousand BC there were subtle communities and the place that you mentioned in Spain is probably one of these. There's also a sites in Turkey. So they were building permanent ovens. And then this really transformed fire from this open flame into something controlled and managed, turning cooking and simple roasting into something social and something cultural. So this completely created this shift in societies, right, It was just
this shift towards agriculture. It expanded with people counted as food, you know, like you said, oh, like the birds maybe we're picking at this cooked meat, and all of a sudden, it was just it shifted like completely shifted society.
Yes, and then it shifts to the like the actually early ovens, which were the earth ovens Kayla, like we talked about a lot in media and the Yukadan and the pits underground that are lined with hot stones and wood and then they're covered to trap the heat and that's that's how they slow roasted food for hours or sometimes twenty four hours, sometimes a full day. But just so these like tabe yeah, yeah, you know, to cook you know underground Hawaii, the Polynesian culture like all of this,
like cooking underground hot stones. That really was the first evolution of the oven.
And yeah, and there were the first evidence of those were at least three thirty thousand years ago. I mean, the earth ovens go back like way back. And then we have the ten door ovens that are you.
Know later, these are like three thousand BC, and these are clay ovens that could reach really really really high temperatures and used wood as if fuel, and they gave whatever was inside a really smoky flavor. And so then it just became about, oh, this tastes really good, This wood taste really good. And then you know, in these ten door ovens, food cooks really quickly at a really really intense heat, so it sears the meat and then also keeping it juicy, allowing the fat to drip away.
Lean proteins were made easier to prepare, and then they were able to make flatbreads and none, and so we see these like faster cooking but also like bold flavors and these interesting textures. So it sort of it was like first it was like, oh, yes, you know, protein and we could cook these different things.
And then it was like, oh, but these things could just.
Also taste really good and feel like feel good in your mouths, so.
It's super And there was clay ovens. Clay ovens, which you know, made bread baking possible, which was a major diet shift because then it made grains a true staple and bread became very central to civilizations. And so yeah, a lot of but a lot of these early ovens used woods as fuels, so the firewood was abundant, and controlling sheet relied on on intuition.
Yeah, adding adding wood to.
You know, make it hotter and increase the temperature, letting ambers die down to gauge the temperature.
I mean that was just all you know, I think this.
Is right, then it becomes still I mean they still do in many parts of the world, but in Mexico in the north so on, they control the grilling of the meat based on wood and the grow going up and the grow going closer to the fire, the grow going up, and then that's how they those master.
Yeah, yeah, I think so like the masters.
I don't know anyway, I don't know they're calling something the thrillers. That that grillers, the grillers who are chings. Those guys they do that. They control the temperature of
going up and down. It's so interesting. What I found fascinating when I went to this restaurant in Spain was like they were like, this was the oldest oven in Europe or I forget where, and I was like it was the it was the oven for the community, like people didn't have a home of and it was for the community and that really helped social life.
So like everybody would just cook at this one spot.
Yes, many early towns, like from the ancient Mediterranean to Asia to Mesoamerica, people brought their foods, their dough whatever to a shared structure, a shared wood fire structure, and so in sits like Pompeii. During the Roman Empire, there was you know, we see these the public baking was common. There were public ovens and communal ovens required coordination. It
required community. Some people gathered fuel, someone managed heat, others waited their turn, and sort of this waiting period became a time for conversation, for exchanging news, for matchmaking.
It was like this for a time for treesement.
Right, people were just chatting and getting to know each other, and now what are you making and what are you putting in this? And so you know, baking requires steady, retained heat. People often pool their resources, making bread a bread day a collective event rather than something private.
So they not only you know, these communal.
Events not only cooked the food, but they started to structure time and reinforced interdependence.
So the opposite of the microwave, right.
Community was literally built around the oven.
It's like today you have a party. Everybody's in the kitchen.
In the kitchen, around the barbecue, around the fried turkey.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's the same.
The people had changed, but we're exactly it's just what we're attracted to is is intrinsically the same.
So when did coal.
And gas, uh you know, enter the party and transformed ovens because that really changed uh cooking as a science totally.
So yeah, like we were saying, for most of history, cooks judged heat by intuition, right the way it look, the way it sounded, the way it felt. And the turning point came in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and this is the Industrial Revolution that we just talked about. Enclosed coal and gas ovens allowed heat to be regulated and measured. So ovens where now not clay, they're now made of cast iron, and cast iron retained and radiated
heat more efficiently and sort of. This combo enabled smaller indoor kitchens, removing the reliance on communal ovens, and this accelerated urban domestic life. And it also standardized recipes because temperatures became more predictable. Eighteen nineteenth century, huge cookbook culture. Now we start seeing like the brands and the stores and all of this.
So it just changed the way.
It also enabled smaller ovens, like smaller indoor It was just so easy because it was just you know, like the microwave was just a smaller that you could have in your house.
So there's this.
Guy named Benjamin Thompson, who is this American born who became a European nobleman. He's known as Count Rumford. He was this eighteenth century scientist and inventor, and he kind of transformed how we think about cooking. He was in Europe, started studying army kitchens and you noticed that open fires and traditional stoves wasted heat and fuel. And he applied this emerging science of thermodynamics and redesigned ovens and fireplaces
to redistribute eat heat more efficiently and consistently. And by doing this, he showed that cooking could be measured and controlled rather than left to intuition. And so he was super innovated, and his work helped make kitchens safer and more fuel efficient and laid the groundwork for cast iron ovens and thermostats.
So we thank him for the thermostat.
We could thank him for the thermostet exactly, and also cast iron stoves and also enclosed ovens, okay. And this eventually made, you know, the oven became a symbol of modern domestic life. And in the later you know, nineteenth and early twentieth century, and this is when industrialization, urban utilities and advertising converged.
Oh my gosh, so this really changed. He changed the game, because imagine an oven without a thermostat.
Forget it. Yeah, so forget it.
Well, I think something that really changed domestic life was gas lines. When gas lines and electricity, right, but that you could actually connect homes to these you know, gas lines. And so this was like nineteenth early twentieth century when urban utilities became a thing and cities like Blondon on New York, these these gas ranges or electric ranges were popping up in people's kitchen and it shifted this like sloky work site to just a really cleaner, mechanized space.
And then that's how the uh that that nineteen fifties enamel range became, you know, this shorthand for efficiency and uh and upward mobility too, Like I still come it that uh that that old enamel range that was just so beautiful, and it became like this tool that symbolized modernity, stability and just like, uh, encourage a domestic domestic life.
It was like the fantasy of domestic life.
Those enamelal ovens that there's nothing more beautiful. And those actually when I first moved to La my apartment had one of those ovens, and it was the most beautiful thing ever. It broke down. My landword was like, well, if you want it, you need to fix it. It's like I was renting, and of course I couldn't afford to fix it, Like what am I gonna do with it?
And he didn't fix it.
And I came home one day and he had replaced it with the ugliest, like no name, like horrible thing, and I literally.
Cried because it was the most beautiful thing.
And so these evans emerged in the twenties and thirties, and they became this sort of stage to fantasy of modern life. You know, in these after the First World War companies like General Electic and Westinghouse and Magic Chef, they began producing these porcelain enamel ranges and whites.
And soft pastels and super.
Glossy They're so stunning, they're beautiful, they're practical, and they're also aspirational, right they're clean. Then this idea of this spotless white kitchen became a signal of discipline and hygiene and scientific class, uranity and class.
Absolutely, we have the rise of the modern woman.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying about, you know, nineteen twenties and thirties saw this like marketing the clients is to the modern woman, and all this advertisements promised all this like leisure and elegance. If you have this stove, you're going to be, you know, more efficient, and it just suggested that domestic labor could be transformed into this like go Adams activity, if you bought this stone romance and what I.
Feel like that sometimes I feel that way if I had that snow look at my stove. God, I know, when I walked into.
That apartment, I was like, oh, I got this is.
The most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And it also part of the kind of Art Deco movement of the design movements of the of that time period. These curved edges and chrome and these not these bold knobs and symmetry. They kind of look like giant radios or like automobiles, and it was sort of the same design as skyscrapers. It was this beauty equaled progress even during the Great Depression.
So manufacturers understood that when money was tight, even when money was tight, aspiration intensified, and this enamel range could transform just a modern kitchen wherever you were, something that felt wow, glamorous, well cosmopolitan and.
Then like so interesting because then because because the stove was no longer just utilitarian and it became part of the homes identity, there was a shift to you know, how advertisers sold ovens is like happiness and femininity, but also to the architecture and fore plans of houses like now the kitchen was a showroom and so they're in his company like ge and Westinghouse, and they would just fill magazines with this like bright spotless kitchens and a
smiling woman was there during something on the stove and with her little apron, with her apron, it was just making you have a better life as a wife and a mother. I mean this was very obviously genderized advertising, but temperature dials, you know, were also framed as like scientific motherhood should suggest feel like if you had precise heat, you can make a perfect cake, which in tito make
you the perfect wife. And so this marketing, this marketing was just you know, beautified domestic labor because of this technology which tried to tie a woman's identity and to to and her worse to that, and so it worked, you know, in the nineteen twenties and thirties. But then we saw, you know, a shift later on. I guess the timeline of Ovens bringing that restaurant esta.
Yeah, Steep, that's my jam. I do love it. I do love it. I mean, that's my jem now.
And also open kitchen, like you know, the wife just go away and make the cake and then bring it out and present it to the world, you know, to the kid to present it to her guest. Now it's like open kitchen and.
It's almost like the whole yeah, like the community, you know, it's like the home is now in the community.
So yes, this that's what now.
I like, oh my god when I see like a Wolf or a Viking of it, and I'm just like, I drool, like I want one of those. But this is an interesting shift. By the late twentieth century, kitchen stop trying to look pretty. They wanted to look powerful. They started to look powerful, and brands like Wolf and Viking they helped redefine what aspiration looks like. Instead of these pastel enamel or white enamel and chrome and curves, they offered
power and weight and stainless steel. And then the nineteen nineties brought the Food Network and the rise of celebrity chefs, and cooking became a performance and so it's different like restaurant ranges are built for super high heat, multiple burners, visible flames, and like durability over decoration. And when companies like Viking became and marketing true commercial style ranges for residential kitchens, all of a sudden, hotter, bigger, more metal
became better. And it was this gender shift, right, So it wasn't oh, the woman clean, you know, it was like, oh, it became masculinized. The white enammel promised ease, and stainless steel promised intensity. So the feminized aesthetic of the kitchen of earlier decades was really just erased.
It was just this shift.
And also, of course the open concept really amplified this shift.
And so that brings us to any this smart ovens. What's a smart oven? I've never heard from this.
Smart evans are like this new thing, and they're connected to Wi Fi, so they're allowed you to control and monitor cooking remotely, like on your phone or via voice commands. The smart event has this promise that meals are perfectly timed, they're easy to monitor, they're guided by built in technology.
I don't know, I'm I don't like them because.
I don't I've never seen me. Yeah yeah, like, yeah, I don't like it for those part. It's too much of the future. Yeah, I want I want either my enamel an enamel stove or like a beautiful viking or maybe somebody needs to come up with some sort of in between. But yeah, this smartphone thing, it's smart oven thing.
Oh, I don't know.
They have everything they have they have refrigerators that are like that.
It's it's just it's just too much. It's just too much. Well, what is your favorite thing to make in the oven?
Oh?
I I love to bake in the oven, but I would say that my favorite thing to make is like like a stew or like like a few weeks ago, when it was pouring rain in La, I made short ribs and this like oh, clicking something for hours and hours and hours and walking into the house and smelling the cooking food and the meat and that it just feels so cozy. That is probably what I love to make in the oven. Like a really like a like this idea of a super tough meat I made of meat that's just like falls apart.
What about Yeah, I'm everything I do everything in the oven. Everything.
Like I said, I would eat at my coffee and the oven if I could, and I can't.
No, I love the other. The oven is like vital to me.
Actually, oh we need two or three ovens, O this and that and then yeah, but like forget about it. Like me, I think we're roasting a chicken or a turkey. That's my favorite.
Oh, roasting a chicken. Oh, that's so good. Thanks for listening, everybody, leave us some comments. Tell us what First of all, if you had an easy bake oven, yes, send us send us pictures of your.
Easy bake ovens, and what your favorite thing is to cook in the oven.
We'd love to hear from you. Yes, share your favorite thing? Do you cook lazag angela? That's meatloaf? What do you love to meet? Thanks for listening everyone, Thanks by y'all. Bye.
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