Economic operation of electric ovens

The energy losses in an electric oven may be divided into radiation and convection loss, preheating loss and the loss due to opening the oven door. Each of these losses was determined for several electric ovens and their effect on the cost of the cooking of various articles of food is discussed. With cheap fuels and inefficient stoves it matters little at what temperature a particular article of food is cooked if the results are satisfactory. With electric cooking, however, it is often several cents cheaper to cook an article of food at a particular temperature; for instance, with electricity at $.05 per kw-hr. it is at least $.02 cheaper to roast beef at 120 deg. cent. than at 180 deg. The results of the experiments performed indicate that for each article of food there is a particular time and temperature for which the cooking can be satisfactorily performed with a minimum amount of energy. The problem of the engineer in the further development of electric cooking is to design practical cooking devices in which the temperature can be accurately regulated with a minimum of attention on the part of the housewife and thus co-operate with the domestic scientist in the inauguration of truly scientific cooking.