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American Gas Association Monthly

Vol. IV

FEBRUARY, 1922

No. 2

Gas Cooking-In the Beginning

In 1851, Samuel Clegg, jr., in a letter to the editor of the Journal of Gas Lighting wrote:

Sir, In the Expositor of last week I saw a portrait of Mr. Sharp, the manager of the Southampton Gas Works, and an article claiming for him the invention of cooking by gas. Now, I do not believe any man living can claim it as his invention. In 1739 Dr. Clayton boiled eggs by a gas flame; in 1792 Mr. Murdock frequently cooked chops and steaks over gas jets; and, in 1824, I perfectly well remember the men at the Ætna Iron Works, near Liverpool, making a gas cooking apparatus, which consisted of a gun-barrel turned backwards and forwards, and pierced with numerous small holes. When anything had to be fried the gridiron was kept in a horizontal position; when anything had to be roasted it was turned in a vertical position, and a plate of tin was placed behind the meat, as a reflector, or hastener, as I think the cooks call it. Mr. Sharp may have contrived a stove for cooking by gas; that is, pieces of iron so placed as to hold different things-some perhaps, requiring to be boiled, others to be fried or roasted; but I believe that Mr. Alfred King, of Liverpool, arranged (I won't call it invented, for it is not worth the name, and I am sure Mr. King will not quarrel with the word) the first convenient apparatus for cooking by gas. Gas cooking stoves are not yet perfect; but they are already economical, and I hope will very soon be universal.

Putney, March 2, 1851.

Six years later an extract from the original minutes of the Middlesborough, England Corporation (Gas Dep't), ran as follows:

July 16, 1857.

"Mr. Avery has applied for a supply pipe from the works to his hotel to enable him to use gas in the day for cooking. The Committee agree to laying a pipe so soon as the apparatus is ready provided Mr. Avery will guarantee a reasonable additional consumption to warrant the outlay."

Note that the gas was evidently shut off the town during the day and that this is a request for a continuous supply for cooking.

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