KITCHEN STOVES
8 July 2008
"The Chicken or the Egg" (Part One of Two)
Well, we started this week by talking about kitchen design, so I thought I’d take that a step further. One of the things I was taught in furniture design was to look at architecture, because so much of the ornamentation in furniture and finish carpentry is really just scaled down versions of architectural design. To use just one example, dentil molding is found on any number of fireplace surrounds, but its use as an ornament in architecture predates that by several thousan
d years. And that, in turn, brings us, if not to the priority of the chicken or the egg, at least to how they may best be cooked.
Actually, it’s interesting that I should choose fireplace surrounds to make my point, because indoor cooking originated in the fireplace. The movies set in medieval times always make those stews look so good (typically made by some old crone who’s been at it all day—you ever notice that?), but I really have my doubts as to how tasty those meals actually were. But I digress.
It is a fact that some of the best stoves are those made for commercial settings and another fact that many of the best stoves are made in Europe, simply because so much of the best cooking takes place there, a
lthough not, sadly enough, all of Europe. Having heard so much about the relative cooking skills of the two countries, the two things I have never been able to understand are fat Englishmen and skinny Frenchmen. But I’m digressing again.
But to return to the subject at hand, does anyone really think that a French chef is going to have anything but the best stove available? And that brings us to Molteni, which is a firm that has been in business since 1923, hand crafting what they like to think of as unrivalled masterpieces, and just drooling over these pictures, I’m inclined to agree with them. They use hand-finished enamel that will always shine and set it off with gleaming cast bronze fittings. And then, just to make us a bit more envious, they custom design each of their stoves to fit the requirements of the chef who will actually be using them.
All of which is 
a stove too expensive and, I suspect, too specialized to do well in a private residence. To begin with, commercial stoves are rarely insulated well, and the heat thus generated has, in some instances, caused some rather unpleasant surprises for unwitting lay users. And because most of their stoves have been designed to be used by several chefs at a time, they are not going to fit well in any kitchen the most of us are likely to have
.
But, just as architectural details often inspire those utilized by cabinetmakers, so do commercial stoves sometimes inspire residential uses. Molteni stoves are now being made in conjunction with Electrolux, which enables the stay-at-home cook to obtain some of the design features of a professional French chef’s stove, while getting something better suited to his purposes.
Joseph
NEXT: "Something for the Rest of Us"
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