Deep Well recipes

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I don't see why you couldn't adapt a slow cooker/crock pot recipe to a deep well as long as you feel heating from the bottom only won't present a problem.  Otherwise, I can't imagine many deep-well specific recipes can be found outside of owner's manuals for vintage stoves.

 

My mom used to make soups and big batches of pasta sauce in the deep well on her '49 Westinghouse, but I don't recall it being used for much else. 
 
I'm attempting a custard tonight (from the manual of the stove)... it should have just finished, but success is limited thus far (it's still a little soupy)... I just put it in for a little longer.

 

I figured someone out there might deepwell more often than I and have some decent recipes they'd be willing to share.
 
Does your 1950 range have the timer to switch the Thermizer from High to Low? The principle of the well was more economical cooking of things that cooked for a long time. Pot roast would do well in it unless you are used to doing it in a pressure cooker. With the 4th coming up, it would be a nice big kettle for cooking potatoes for potato salad. I am glad you are using the Thermizer. Does yours have an open-coil element in a bed of ceramic? If that is what you have, it's not able to be lifted for surface cooking, so using it as the deep well cooker is the only way to get any use out of it. Most of the range manuals state it is for things you would cook in a Dutch Oven. Oh, they also mention sterilizing baby bottles. You could water bath process pint or pint and a half jars of fruit and high acid tomatoes.

While we are on the subject of deep wells, one of the rarest pieces of Revere Ware is their deep well kettle which was introduced in 1941. I have only seen pictures, but it was made into the early 1950s because there are drawings of the whole line in the back of the recipe books for the pressure cookers and the kettle is pictured there.
 
Tom:

When did the change to a non-usable open-coil, ceramic-bed element take place?

The reason I ask is that I grew up with a Raymond Loewy-styled 1948-49 Frigidaire 40-inch range, and the deep well unit on that one (open coil, ceramic bed) could be raised and used.

An ad shot of the one we had is below:

danemodsandy++6-21-2013-20-31-39.jpg
 
Interesting... mine is the RM-10 (BOL for 1950), but the deep well is from a RJ-60, just below top of the line for 1947.  Both have ceramic disks.  My great aunt had a 1954 and it had a deep well that could be raised to be a burner.  I just assumed that it was something that came out when they restyled them in the early 50s.
 
Tom, unfortunately I have no timer on my deep well and it is my least used burner for obvious reasons.  I'd like to change that.  The custard I made today in it was pretty good.  I tried a coffee cake (another frigidaire recipe in it a few years back, it didn't turn out as good, but perhaps I should try it again sometime), otherwise it's all be soups and stews.
 
Will:

So far as I know, our 48-49 * range was Frigidaire's TOL at the time, with automatic timed cooking, double ovens and the deep well cooker. All-porcelain, too. I've seen a single-oven version somewhere, possibly here on Shopper's Square.

And it definitely had the element that could be raised; Mom used it a lot.

P.S.: As much as I love GE ranges, I have to say that Loewy did Frigidaire proud on this one; it has much more Truman-era pizzazz than GE ranges of the time did. The GEs are handsome, but not glamorous like the Frigidaire was. GE caught up starting in '52, in my opinion.

* I've seen ads dated in both these years for this range; I don't know what that means in terms of model years.
 
Ah, Memories....

Boy, seeing the cooktop on your range brings back memories!

The memories center around boilovers, to which my mom was prone, since she absolutely detested housekeeping and cooking and usually wasn't paying attention.

That "waterfall" edge on the cooktop let a boilover cascade all over the knobs, the left oven's door handle, the oven door's front and the front of the storage drawer. Cleanup was, uh, fun.

Something tells me it only had to happen to you once, right? :)
 
So far, so good

No major boilovers yet, but now that I say that... lol

 

I only have one oven, on the right hand side.  There is no light inside!  The left hand door is my storage compartment.  There is no storage compartment on the bottom of the stove.  It is just empty space.  That said, it is still a far nicer range than the mid-90s Amana it replaced.  Quality really went into these... even the BOL!

 

 
 
Will:

There is no questioning the quality of Frigidaire's products of that time frame. The engineering - even over-engineering - was incredible. It was as if GMs car divisions built every car to the quality standard of a Cadillac.
 
oooh... ahhh!  "A thermizer is so luxurious honey, let's get one!"  Questions for anyone: What killed the thermizer/deep well?  When did they start and breathe their last gasp?
 
Greg (oldhouseman)

I was just about to ask you the same question, Will.

I know he closed out his account here and ceased to post, though I don't know why. I lost touch with him and can't raise him, even though he knows my mom and sister.

If anyone has a lead, it would be greatly appreciated.
 
Yes, Greg, I remember.  I'll have to go hunting through my email.  I remember we corresponded there for a while, perhaps his address is still active.  

 

Any idea about what birthed/killed the thermizer?
 
Deep-Well Cooker Demise:

Will:

It has always been my opinion that the deep-well cooker was a sales-driven way to make postwar ranges look more sophisticated than they actually were. They did their job just fine, no problem there, but they were low tech posing as high tech, to impress midcentury housewives.

Once higher-tech options like Sensi-Temp burners, pull-out ovens and probe-controlled ovens became possible, manufacturers turned to those to advance in the sales race.

Again, this is an opinion.

I should add that I personally knew some ladies who didn't care for their deep-well cookers, because the raised burner still wasn't the same as having four Calrod or Corox or Radiantube burners. Basically, if you didn't use the deep-well cooker all that much, you could end up feeling robbed of a "real" burner.
 
I'm in touch with Greg once in a while.  He's still in the same house, and still using my mom's '49 Westinghouse Commodore.  I need to write him, since I've been meaning to and my e-mail was hacked this week so he likely received a bogus message from me.

 

He says he visits the site once in a while, but had some issues a few years back that caused him to pull his membership.
 
There have been a few times I've debated taking out the deep well and putting in a fourth burner...

 

I do occasionally feel robbed of a burner, but at the same time I do feel that I haven't given the thermizer a decent chance.

 

I was debating changing out the burner in front of the deepwell to an original Frigidaire one.  It should just be a standard smaller burner correct?  It always bugged me that it didn't match.
 
Will:

I'm not sure I'd oust the Thermizer. I think I might look for the same one that came with your range, just for the sake of originality, but there's something to be said for having one. They do a great job on soups, stews and pot roast, for starters. Mom made a pretty good pot roast, despite her disdain for cooking, and it was much better when she was using the Loewy range's Thermizer than it was later, when she acquired a six-quart Presto pressure cooker. Flavors were fuller and more rounded, better melded by slower cooking.
 
True. The 1947 doesn't look bad and works, but if someone comes across one in their parts bin I'll consider it. I'm not planning on loosing the thermizer, but I do want to use it more. Only 1 large burner can be annoying sometimes and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind.

The front burner should just be standard Frigidaire right? No super burner? I have a spare original one, but wanted to be sure before I replaced it.
 
If, by Superburner, you mean a Speed Heat, those require a different control and are two wire elements instead of the three wire elements and switches on yours. The TK element you have now is quite suitable and, if it stays flat when heated, is a keeper. On Frigidaires that had raisable deep well elements, there was a channel in the side of the well where the end of the Radiantube with the connections rode up and down. Frigidaire did provide a second 8" element on ranges with that feature, but it was of lower wattage than the front 8". I think the front one was 2050 and the rear was 1700. I have never used the well kettle on mine; just kept the element up for regular cooking. When John found an old 24" Frigidaire apartment range, it had 208 volt elements because ranges used to be manufactured to cope with the reduced voltage of commercial electrical service like apartment buildings. I replaced the two front elements on my RT70 and swapped the 1700 for the 2050 watt 8" element. Now the front units are very high speed, like about 1500 watts for the 6" and maybe 2500 watts for the 8". I remember stir frying vegetables in a piece of porcelainized cast iron on the 6" element and once the pan was hot, adding the food did not slow it down for a second. "Quick cooked in dragon fire" had nothing on that experience. Before I had ever cooked on a Frigidaire, I was worried about the response time for those thick surface units, but, it you stayed close while they were on HIGH, as one should always do, and switched them to SIMMER just as stuff came to a boil, they were fine. The thing I dislike about old Radiantubes is that with decades of use, they have a tendency to warp since they are not anchored to a frame like Calrod, Chromalox and Corox elements.
 
Will:

This is just personal opinion and perspective, so take it with a grain of salt, okay? After all, this is your range.

If the choice were mine, I think I would set the goal of getting the range back to completely original condition. The reason is: This is a very rare survival. BOL appliances are usually purchased by people who can't afford better; people like my great-aunt Aena, who always bought BOL even though she could afford whatever she wanted, are uncommon. Less well-off people tend not to take care of things, meaning that their possessions are often doomed to a short lifespan.

A range like yours would have been found in new tract houses, the "builder's special" that was okay when new, but would have been replaced when the homeowner could afford better.

For someone to deliberately purchase BOL and then take care of it the way your range has been doesn't happen every day. Aunt Aena did, but she was the only person I ever knew personally who did. You've got something great there!
 

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