We live in a world where everything around us, from products to experiences, is being designed to make our lives easier. We have robots that clean, cars that drive themselves, and algorithms that know what we want before we do. This is true in the kitchen as well. There are outdoor grills that use Artificial Intelligence to ensure perfectly cooked food, refrigerators that make shopping lists, and voice-activated kitchens where you can yell out instructions to Alexa. But, contrary to popular opinion, this isn’t a completely new thing — manufacturers have always tried to make our lives easier.
Given how many buttons modern ovens are equipped with (we don’t even use all of them, to be honest), it’s odd that one very clever oven feature from the ’50s and ’60s has completely gone missing. We’re talking about pull-out cooking charts that were part of a few vintage ovens. These charts provided detailed instructions on how long core ingredients needed to cook for. The amazing part is that the breakdown didn’t just include headers like beef, pork, or fish, but actually went deeper. For example, according to a vintage Roper Oven Stove Bake Master cooking chart that’s for sale on ebay, pork loin ends needed to cook at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 to 50 minutes, while the center of the pork loin only needed to cook at that temperature for 35 to 40 minutes.
The oven-timing instructions extended to cakes, casseroles, cookies and pies as well, which meant that people didn’t have to constantly check the recipe for instructions.
Ovens had built-in cooking instruction sheets
Images of these pull-out charts have also popped up on Reddit. One user posted a photograph of a weathered baking cheat sheet that belonged in a pastel green Vulcan Smoothcap from 1922. The oven, they said, hadn’t reached a point of no return yet. “Definitely time to get it into a shop to get it ready for the next 100 years. It was hooked up from new until just a year ago in the same exact place,” they posted.
Another user posted an image of a beautifully designed chart from a different Roper Bakemaster model. This one lists out cooking times and temperatures for more than 50 different foods, including nine cakes, four cookies, and four pies. It also comes with some additional tips: Roast meat unseared and uncovered, the chart says, also noting that cooks must add 10 minutes per pound for rolled roasts. “It’s a beautiful bit of mid-century design,” the original poster, DetroitIsNotThatBad wrote, adding that the oven in question was a gas oven that needed a long lighter to get it going.
A metal pull-out chart is one of many vintage kitchen features that have been lost to the passage of time. There were stoves in the ’50s that had built-in soup pots, cabinets with flour sifters attached, and wall-mounted can openers. Perhaps some of these will make a comeback too, like a few other vintage kitchen items that are trending again. We could all do with a tiny television set (but bigger than your phone) to watch our favorite food shows while whipping up dinner.
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