>> If it works for a surface burner, why not an oven.
You absolutely could make what you're describing for an oven, and you absolutely could cook food in that oven.
But using it would be a miserable process.
Surface burners have controls which vary their heat output, but only as a percentage of their maximum output, not as a temperature setting. They can do this because the thermostat in the system is YOU, the cook!
Surface burner controls are like the accelerator pedal on your car. Let off the pedal and you get your idling engine's minimum output. Floor it and you get your engine's maximum output. But no position of pressing the pedal strictly correlates with vehicle speed - it is up to the driver to vary the pedal input to accelerate to, and maintain, their target speed. Want to go 40 mph on flat ground? It might take a medium amount of pedal. Want to go 40mph up a steep mountain incline? It might take most of the pedal's throw and significant laboring of the engine to do so. Want to go 40mph DOWN a steep incline? You may need to let off the pedal entirely.
The human driver adjusts the power input to what is necessary, just as you do for a pan cooking pancakes, or a huge pot boiling water. On a vehicle, the cruise control is a good equivalent for the thermostat - set the cruise control to 40mph, and it throttles the engine as necessary to maintain your speed regardless of the conditions.
For an oven, you could do the equivalent manual process, having multiple taps of fixed power level inputs. But to obtain your target temperature will take a lot of waiting, monitoring, and adjusting. It becomes very easy to overshoot and burn your pie, or undershoot and change the way your meal cooks. Recipe guidance is based on a measurable time+temperature quantity - take away the stability of the temperature, and the cook time also varies, meaning you have more guesswork and checking to see if things are actually done. And you toss repeatability out the window - a pizza baked tomorrow will take a different amount of time than your pizza did today, just because of the temperature swings, heat soak, etc. Recipe books would be a disaster, as there would be no consistency between oven brands or models, let alone adjustments for the local climate or other factors that influence the temperature inside the oven. And the system becomes extremely sensitive to interference, such as heat loss when opening the oven door.
Doesn't sound very fun, does it?
You absolutely could make what you're describing for an oven, and you absolutely could cook food in that oven.
But using it would be a miserable process.
Surface burners have controls which vary their heat output, but only as a percentage of their maximum output, not as a temperature setting. They can do this because the thermostat in the system is YOU, the cook!
Surface burner controls are like the accelerator pedal on your car. Let off the pedal and you get your idling engine's minimum output. Floor it and you get your engine's maximum output. But no position of pressing the pedal strictly correlates with vehicle speed - it is up to the driver to vary the pedal input to accelerate to, and maintain, their target speed. Want to go 40 mph on flat ground? It might take a medium amount of pedal. Want to go 40mph up a steep mountain incline? It might take most of the pedal's throw and significant laboring of the engine to do so. Want to go 40mph DOWN a steep incline? You may need to let off the pedal entirely.
The human driver adjusts the power input to what is necessary, just as you do for a pan cooking pancakes, or a huge pot boiling water. On a vehicle, the cruise control is a good equivalent for the thermostat - set the cruise control to 40mph, and it throttles the engine as necessary to maintain your speed regardless of the conditions.
For an oven, you could do the equivalent manual process, having multiple taps of fixed power level inputs. But to obtain your target temperature will take a lot of waiting, monitoring, and adjusting. It becomes very easy to overshoot and burn your pie, or undershoot and change the way your meal cooks. Recipe guidance is based on a measurable time+temperature quantity - take away the stability of the temperature, and the cook time also varies, meaning you have more guesswork and checking to see if things are actually done. And you toss repeatability out the window - a pizza baked tomorrow will take a different amount of time than your pizza did today, just because of the temperature swings, heat soak, etc. Recipe books would be a disaster, as there would be no consistency between oven brands or models, let alone adjustments for the local climate or other factors that influence the temperature inside the oven. And the system becomes extremely sensitive to interference, such as heat loss when opening the oven door.
Doesn't sound very fun, does it?
