COOKING BY RADIO

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 42, 4 May 1928, Page 14

COOKING BY RADIO

NEW DOMESTIC POSSIBILITY Radio is now destined soon to enter the kitchen and help the housewife cook meals in an incredibly short time, Science has just perfected a new household marvel in the form of a device} which may be called a "radio" stove. It is based, strange to say, on the principle of the radio knife which has been so successfully used in bloodless surgery. The new electric cooker is adapted from the diathermic heat device used by physicians and reduces the ‘time of cooking meals from hours to seconds! For example, steaks have been broiled in half a minute, eggs fried in two seconds, and large potatoes baked to the queen‘s taste in fifty seconds. ‘This new cooking apparatus is simply a high-frequency electric device. It broils, bakes, or fries by paSsing several hundred thousand volts of electricity through the food, at a frequency of a million and more cycles. It cooks the food wtih a harmless heat. Tissentially it is not different from the electric knife used in the latest bloadless surgery, or the machine which generates heat within the body tissues to clear up lung congestion in pneumonia patients and relieve neuritis and rheumatic pais. Tesla Coil Development. That high-frequency currents will cook is not a new discovery, for ‘Tesla coil experimenters were baking potatoes twenty yeats and more ago. [But the experimenters arc workitg to develop the proper type of machine and fittings to make high-speed cooking practical in the home. If they succeed, electric cooking may become cheaper than coal or gas, a contributor. to "Popular Mechanics’ prophesies. It is explained that while the average high-frequency apparatus has an efficiency of but 50 per cent., as compared with 90 per cent. for good resistancetype heaters, the time element is so much in favour that it more than offsets the losses. It takes about an hour lo heat wp an oven and bake a large potato, but if the same work can be done in 50 seconds, the cost will be no greater than burning an electric light for one minute, it is estimated. The problem that the experimenters still have to solve is the type and size of high-frequency generator to be used and the best type of electrodes for different forms of food. Using an electrode that is too small to broil a steak may caltse the meat to burn, and one too big will slow up the cooking, as it does not permit the necessary co1centration of current in a small area. A Striking Advantage. One striking advantage of high-fre-quency cvoking, particularly of meats, it is pointed out, is the equal distribution of cooking throughout the food. It climinaies steaks burned on the outside ‘and too raw within, for the colour, all ‘through the meat, will be exactly the | same as the colour on the outside. Neither the metal plate beneath tlie steak nor the electrode about it hecomes hot, since all the heat generated is prto‘duced by the resistance of the meat

Lissucs, Potatoes can be baked by simply sticking a small electrede, of a piece of wire in either end. Jiggs broken in a metal tray, which is connected to one side of the electric line, can be fried | by touchiuy the other clectrode to their surfaces, _ To hard-boil an egg in_ its shell, it is only necessary to stick a needle in either end, insert the wires, ‘en turn the switch. Actually the egg | not boiled, in the usual sense, for the current apparently coagulates the albumen by vapourising the water in it. The water, reduced to steam, will burst the shell within a few seconds. Entirely Different Taste. Manufacturers of physicians’ electrical equipment are rather doubtful that high-frequency couking will ever — become practical for the average homme, though its novelty, or the nutritional yalue of the food or its taste, may overshadow all objections. ‘Those who have vaten meat broiled in this way say that it tastes entirely different from the usual steak, the taste being a cross between broiled steak and boiled meat, owing to the face that it loses note of its juices and only a very small part of its fats. One of the great advantages claimed for cooking with the diathermic stove is its cleanliness and simplicity. ‘The stove, which can be used wherever electricity is to be had, is extremely simple in operation. The heat is regulated by a single dial in much the same way as a radio receiver is Operated to tune in a station, and to increase or decrease the volume of the music. ‘The

"radio" cook merely snaps on a switch and keeps an eye on the dial which indicates the volume of heat and also shows when the food is thoroughly done. Another snap of the button shnts off the heat, What could be simpler ?,