The conditions under which this would have been used as a griddle precluded an electric skillet. It's also sort of fun to imagine the occasions where a griddle this large would have been used long ago. You can wash cast aluminum, scour it with an SOS pad or polish it with a wire wheel until it gets absolutely smooth and is almost non stick, especially if before making pancakes, you put a little vegetable oil on a paper towel and lightly wipe the surface before starting to bake pancakes. Many of you might be too young to remember Club Aluminum cookware, but it was cast aluminum that when brand new had sort of concentric raised ring interior surfaces. Once it was scoured hard a few times with SOS or Brillo pads, it became mirror shiny and smooth. As for laundry residue, no washday was complete without thoroughly rinsing out and wiping dry all parts of the machine, leaving the lid open to let the interior dry out, taking the tension off the rollers in the wringer and leaving the agitator off the spline which was wiped with a bit of grease. One of the major points in the ads for the Bendix Automatic Home Laundry was that it washed, rinsed, extracted, cleaned itself and shut off, all automatically, so cleaning the washing machine was regarded as important. Especially with the cast aluminum tubs and parts, you could not let residue of the alkaline washing products remain on the surfaces or the aluminum would start pitting and developing rough places which could damage laundry. Back when these were the most desired wringer washers, the majority of the people who owned them knew the value of things and took very good care of things that were bought with hard-earned money. You must remember that for many people, a wringer washer was the first step away from doing laundry totally by hand, soaking overnight, scrubbing clothes on a washboard, which meant having your back bent over wash tubs and your hands in water with harsh chemicals like washing soda before the advent of vinyl gloves, boiling whites to bleach them and be sure that soap was dissolved and could rinse away so that none of the cottons and linens would yellow when ironed. It's true that many of the wringer machines found now look rough, but if they do, you have to remember their age and the fact that they were used by poorer and poorer people each time they changed hands and were probably not cared for as well as they were when new. The quality of Maytag cast aluminum was first rate. During World War II, Maytag's aluminum foundry was used to make airplanes. While seeing just the lid remain from a beautiful Maytag Master would make me think of the wonderful machine that was no more, I would have no qualms about eating food prepared on a properly conditioned Maytag cast aluminum cover.
