Cookers in the UK

[fan-of-fans]

I've always thought it was interesting how small cookers in the UK seem compared to those in the United States. They look to be about the size of our 24" ranges here which is an usual size. We also have 20" apartment size ranges which again are fairly rare, and also 36" and 40" which are mostly not seen as often except for "professional style" ranges.

Even the commercial ranges in the UK seem smallish compared to what we have here. And American commercial ranges typically have pilot lights whereas I think the UK ones all use spark ignition.

Are ceramic topped cookers common in the UK and how back were they introduced. I notice Hyacinth on Keeping Up Appearances had a ceramic top cooker and it has that gray speckled pattern that was common on most ceramic top ranges over here starting around the early 90s-present day.

I used to see a lot of solid hobs also on UK ranges, are they still used? Here those are only used on commercial ranges and some portable household hotplates. I don't know of any company that sells household ranges or cooktops with them. They were considered sort of a posh style back in the 80s and 90s and came from the luxury brands like Jenn Air and others but some of the more typical brands like Frigidaire and Whirlpool had them also. They went away as soon as ceramic tops started getting more popular and now I think ceramic cooktops have overtaken coils on most of the higher end ranges and cooktops.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Sealed solid electric plates tended to to be slow at doing anything (heating up, cooling down). They quickly became 'bottom of the line' in virtually every manufacturer's range of cookers.

Gas was promoted as instantly 'controllable'.

Spiral electric rings were much more popular, far more controllable and easy to repair (Creda, Tricity, Belling, etc). They were largely superseded by ceramic.

Ceramic hobs started off as a 'superior' way to cook than spiral rings, and were quite dear at the time.

Even dearer was Halogen, which again was touted as the sophisticated way to cook, and better than slower ceramic versions.

Now we have induction...!

 

[iej]

Standard European appliances are all 600mm wide. That's because kitchen are designed to be modular.
However, it's fairly common .to have 800 and 900mm wide hobs (cook tops) in modern kitchens.

Slot in / free standing "cookers" are pretty low end and normally associated with very old-fashioned kitchens. They've gradually disappeared.

The only exception to that is big range cookers which can be pretty huge.

This would give you an idea of full size cookers used in this part or the world. They aren't cheap though. You're looking at about €2000 - 3000 and more.

How to pick the best super-cooker for your needs

Kya deLongchamps looks at the vast array of electric and gas super-cookers

www.irishexaminer.com

 

[maytagbear]

I hope it is still made

I find the Baby Belling cooker to be so endearing..almost like a pet........

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[vacerator]

Small apartments, and hotel suites

in NY city, etc. still have 24 inch wide range cookers. They are still made by a few manufacturers. GE even still offers 30 inch wide drop in styles with no bottom drawer.
While 30 inches is the most common in the states, upscale kitchens can have as wide as a 60 inch professional style range with 6 high btu gas burners, a grille, and two large ovens. They won't set you back as many quid as a large AGA.
Viking for example is currently offering a free appliance with the purchase of one. Buy a built in refrigerator, get a free range, dishwasher, or microwave in a drawer style, built in, or shelf mount style.

 

[iej]

Pilot lights have been regulated out of existence many years ago. I don't think they've been used in Europe since the 1970s.

You also have to remember Mrs Bucket sends up the obnoxious stuck up social climber. Her appliances and house are very deliberately, frightfully ordinary and just done up with ridiculous looking accessories for her candle light suppers and so on.

The whole show was effectively about a social climber in the modern English class system.

She's ordinary, lower middle class, married to a council official and gets excited over her slim line telephone with redial function. That's the whole ridiculousness of that show. She's more in common with Marge Simpson and Peg Bundy than she would ever admit to.

If she had money, it would have been all Miele and Aga and so on and a far, far bigger house, big car and way less attitude.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Baby Belling

Is indeed still available - with the solid plates!

http://https//www.belling.co.uk/products/cooking/table-top-cooking/

 

[rolls_rapide]

Belling and misinformation!

The same kind of flaws that plagued Hoover's UK website, namely false product description, are affecting Belling's site. (Hoover kept going on about the Purepower upright as having a bag check indicator - no it doesn't, and hasn't for many a year).

In the case of Belling, solid plate cookers are described as 'ceramic'. Wrong. Who is writing this rubbish?

The link shows the "ceramic" description in the main header, but the specifications state "solid plate elements".

http://https//www.belling.co.uk/products/cooking/freestanding-cookers/fs50et/444443920/

 

[iej]

'Double induction oven'

50cm electric oven double induction oven offers a programmable timer, touch control, defrost function and easy clean enamel. A/B energy rating.

What's an 'induction oven' ?

https://www.belling.co.uk/products/cooking/freestanding-cookers/fs50doti/444444764/

 

[cuffs054]

I like them all.

 

[jamiel]

Apparently UK cookers' ovens have a different design than we're used to in the US, with the elements close to the sides of the oven covered by enamel covers(if they aren't convection) and there's nothing on the bottom of the oven itself.

 

[fan-of-fans]

That Baby Belling is cute. I seem to think the UK also has a toaster oven that has two solid hobs on top as well. In the US, being that we only have 120V circuits with up to 20 amp current, we don't have anything like those because our small appliance circuits can't handle that all at once. We either have toaster oven/convection toaster ovens, or one or two burner hotplates, but nothing with those combined together into one appliance that I know of.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Oven elements

It was the case that British cookers had the main oven elements in the left and right walls. My mum's 1975 Creda 'Carefree' certainly did. Gran's even earlier 1970's Creda 'Cavalier' would have too.

The smaller top oven had (I think!) an element under the oven floor. I can't be sure if the grill element was also switched in, cooking from above and below.

Foreign cookers (according to 'Which?) tended to have the main oven elements above and below - and I suppose that makes sense - especially if the grill element is situated in the one and only oven, of a single oven cooker. It's also better for cooking certain foods, say, pizza.

My Creda 'Aspire' had a combined small top oven and grill, and a 'Circulaire' main oven. The element was circular (a couple of turns in a helical spiral) surrounding a motorised fan, on the rear wall. It cooked quicker at a lower heat.

The grill element in my 1998 'Aspire' was the 'Solarplus' type (like bars on an electric fire, as in Photo #1, below). Mum's slightly later 2004 'Aspire' has the more conventional grill element (Photo #2). (Pics nicked off of internet for illustration purposes only!)

Regarding the 'Carefree' and the two 'Aspires': half of the grill could be switched on if there was only a small amount of food to grill - hence the two conventional elements in photo 2. With the more sophisticated 'Solarplus' element in photo 1, only four of the eight bars were switched on, on the single setting - obviously all on the same side of the grill.

 

[jamiel]

That makes sense--with a eye-level grill, there wouldn't be a need for broil (top) heat in the oven.

 

[iej]

Timeline:

Hob types:

Before the mid-1980s:

UK built cookers tended to have open coils with a drip tray underneath. You could flip up the whole cook top and clean it out. These were considered more controllable.

Continental European built cookers tended to have solid plates and were definitely less popular as a result of this.

While there were ceramic hobs/cooktops at the top-of-the-line level quite a while before this, they really went mass-market in the mid to late 1980s and you started to see a whole range of both traditional radiant elements and halogen models which lit up extremely brightly when on. I don't know if they were ever a feature in the US?

Fan ovens also became a mass-market product in the mid 1980s although they'd been around on the top of the line models (and also a lot of continental built-in brands) for quite some time at that stage.

They typically have a circular element around the fan at the back of the oven and a grill / broiler element at the top.

----

Check out this mid 80s advert for 'Cook Electric' from ESB Ireland: It even has its own synth pop theme tune, but it gives you a fairly good overview of the cookers that were around in these islands (and I know the UK's a different market but we had more or less the same appliances) back in the 1980s.

 

[panthera]

Every time I visited friends and relations in the UK

I was amazed at how much easier their ranges were to use than the German and American ranges of the same period.

That eye-level broiler design - so practical, so easy to use. Perfect.

As to size, 60cm is just fine for 99% of the oven work I do. In fact I have a deluxe American version of the 60cm stove in storage - the use of standard heating elements in such a small space leads to a super well regulated, very fast heating oven.

As to solid plate hobs. Yuck! How that ever came to be adopted as 'luxury' design in the US is beyond me. I hated them in Germany, I hated them in the UK, I ran from them in the US. Awful. In all their horrid aspects.

Ceramic and Induction caught on much faster in Europe for a simple reason: Enormously cheaper than in the US.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Creda 'Carefree'

This one is very similar to the one Mum had. Her's had a solid white enamelled grill/top oven door, rather than the black glass door frontage as shown here.

Four neon pilot lamps for: hotplates (1 lamp), Main Oven, Grill, Top Oven.

Next to that, the Hob Illumination press toggle switch. A fluorescent strip light is situated recessed, immediately below the control knobs. Twas very handy for seeing inside the pots and pans.

Next is Start and End hands for main oven timer control with 'Push to set' and 'Push for manual' functionality, followed by the master clock with red 'minute minder' timer, which buzzed.

Rotary knobs controlled the four hotplates, grill, top oven, and main oven. The rear right plate shown here has dual functionality, either half or all the plate can be used to suit the diameter of the pan. I can't remember if mum's had the dual plate, but I do remember hers had a boosted faster plate. As the knobs were turned, they had numbers printed against coloured backgrounds 'Hi' being red, 'Lo' was something like pale green. Oven temperatures were in Fahrenheit. The grill had full and half settings.

Main oven had a glass inner door, beyond the solid outer door. Illuminated main oven, with 'Credaclean' catalytic liners on side walls, ceiling and rear wall. Two chromed steel shelves.

Top oven / grill had enamelled liners and one chrome shelf. Twin-handled grill pan was very robust.

The aluminium cap on the hob, at the back, is a steam vent from the main oven. The vent chimney passes through the spillage tray underneath the hob. The hob is hinged, with a chromed steel prop arm to hold it open. Mum used to put a sheet of tin foil pressed into shape, in the spillage tray for easy cleaning.

A couple of times, the spiral hotplate elements exploded in spectacular fashion. One shot particles across the kitchen, damaging the floor tiles and pitted the underside of an aluminium pot.

It was a very good cooker and lasted 29 years. Eventually the spill tray became pitted and holed. The wiring became very brittle at the end of its life too.

The modern rubbish is nowhere near as sturdy.

 

[iej]

I remember my folks had *exactly* the same model as the above. It lasted until we moved house and I don't know what happened it then. My grandmother also had some kind of later Creda with a halogen, ceramic top and a fan oven and that lasted for year and years.

I agree, it's not comparable with modern 'rubbish' because we are getting far too used to the idea that you can get a major electrical appliance for less than a fraction of the cost to what we paid for many of these old classics.

If you look a the cost of an early 1980s machine, you are really looking at similar pricing to Miele and TOL Bosch models when you work out inflation. They were much better machines than the junk that was sold under the same brands in more recent years.

What we are doing these days is incredibly environmentally damaging - reducing what were long-term durable goods to disposable commodities. I am in favour of taxing the hell out of manufacturers that are basically engaging in environmental dumping by doing this. I'd rather see people buy a good appliance on finance / HP and have it last for a decade or more than see them buy several appliances that are absolutely junk and will end up scrapped within a couple of years (4 or 5 at most).

We really need to be getting back to sustainable appliances again that are repairable and last.

Miele and a few others are still in that space, but everyone else pretty much seems to make appliances that are designed for the skip (dumpster) not the repair technician.

I have two Miele ovens at the moment and they are extremely well built devices and I'm quite confident that I'll get a very long time out of them. It's the same with my washing machine and dryer, I am quite happy to pay quite a bit more, knowing that I've massively reduced the environmental impact and that they'll last for at least a decade or probably more like two.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Re Miele purchases:

That is very commendable. I agree; too many items are scrapped because of the lack of sensibly priced spare parts.

I think Bosch-Siemens have a reasonable set-up, in terms of spare parts, diagrams and generally reasonable prices.

As for Apple deliberately slowing down older phones... They should be bloody well shot!!! How many millions of folk were led to believe, "Oh my phone is slow, it must be too old now...". That is criminal behaviour in my opinion. What they should have done is offered the option to upgrade the battery, for a nominal sum. That way you build a degree of trust with the customer. Instead, they saw the customer as a cash-cow and thus shot themselves in the foot. Ooooh, it make me boil...! On that basis, I am even more reluctant to by an Apple phone now. Good one, Apple!