Electric Toy Stoves: A Hot History Lesson

Introduced in 1930 Lionel Company.The fully functional toy stove, better known for its electric train models, shown above, had two electric burners and an oven that reached 260°C. The package included a set of cookware including a frying pan, a saucepan with a lid, a muffin tin, a kettle and a wooden potato masher. I would also expect a spoon, whisk or spatula, but most girls probably already had one. Simply plug in the toy and learning housewives can imitate their mothers frying eggs, baking cupcakes or boiling water for tea.

A Brief History of Toy Stoves

Even earlier electrificationCast iron toy stoves became popular in the mid-19th century. First powered by coal or alcohol and later by oil or gas, these toy stoves were scaled-down working equivalents of the real thing. Girls could use their stoves along with a toy waffle iron or small frying pan to whip up breakfast. If that wasn't fun enough, they could heat up the miniature iron and iron their dolls' clothes. Designed to help girls understand their household responsibilities, these toys were the gendered equivalent of their brothers' toys. toy steam engines. If you think fossil fuel-powered “educational toys” are a recipe for disaster, you're right. Many children suffered serious burns and sometimes died from literally playing with fire. Again, people in the 1950s thought game with uranium it was safe.

When electric toy stoves came on the scene in the 1910s, things didn't get much safer, as newcomers also lacked basic safety features. For example, the burners on the 1930 Lionel stove could only be turned off or on, but at least the kids weren't cooking over an open fire. At 86 centimeters tall, the Lionel line was significantly larger than its smaller predecessors. The height is ideal for small children to cook while standing.

Western Electric's Junior Electric Range model was demonstrated at an exhibition in 1915 in New York.Strong

Long before Lionel's oven Western Electric The company had a group of girls demonstrate their Junior Electric Range model at the Electrical Exhibition held in New York in 1915. Junior Electric took its place at the exhibition of conventional motors for sewing machines, vacuum cleaners and electric washing machines.

The Junior Electric was about 30cm high and had six burners and an oven. The electrical cord is plugged into the light socket. Children played with it, sitting on the floor or on the table. A visitor to the exhibition called the miniature line “the greatest electrical innovation in recent years.” Cooking with electricity in any form was still innovative, with George A. Hughes introducing his eponymous electric range just five years earlier. When Junior Electric came out less than a third of US households wiring for electric lighting was carried out.

How electricity turned cooking into a science

One of the reasons to give little girls working toy stoves was so they could learn to distinguish between hot flames and low flames and learn how to cook without burning food. These are skills that come with experience. Directions like “bake until done in a moderate oven,” common in 19th-century recipes, require far more tacit knowledge than is necessary to, say, assemble a modern boxed brownie mix. The latter comes with detailed instructions and assumes you can control the oven temperature to within a few degrees. This type of precision simply did not exist in the 19th century, largely because it was very difficult to calibrate wood- or coal-fired instruments. Girls had to start at an early age to master these skills by the time they got married, and were expected to cook their own meals around the house.

Electricity changed the game.

Comparing “flameless stoves”, an engineer named Percy Wilcox Gumaer extensively tested four different electric ovens and then presented his results at the 32nd annual meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (the predecessor to today's IEEE) on July 2, 1915. At the time, metered electricity was more expensive than gas or coal, so Gumaer researched the most economical form of cooking using electricity, comparing different approaches such as longer cooking on low heat versus faster cooking in a hotter oven, the effect of heat loss when opening the oven door, and the benefits of searing meat on the stove rather than in the oven before frying.

Gumaer did not start from scratch. Just like how Yoshitada Minami had to study the perfect rice recipe before he could develop automatic rice cookerGumaer decided he needed to understand the principles of roasting beef. Minami turned to his wife Fumiko, who spent five years researching and testing rice cooking options. Gumaer turned to the work of Elizabeth S. Sprague, a nutrition research fellow at the University of Illinois, and H. S. Grindley, a professor of general chemistry.

In his 1907 publication “Precise Method for Roasting Beef“Sprague and Grindley defined quality terms such as medium-rare and well-done by accurately measuring the internal temperature at the center of the roast. They concluded that beef could be roasted at temperatures between 100 and 200°C.

Continuing this research, Gumaer tested 22 roasts at 100°C, 120°C, 140°C, 160°C and 180°C, measuring the time required to achieve doneness, medium-rare and well-done, and calculating the cost per kilowatt-hour. He repeated his tests with cookies, bread and biscuits.

If you're interested, Gumaer has determined that cooking with electricity can be a few cents cheaper than other methods by roasting beef at 120°C instead of 180°C. It's also more economical to roast beef on the stove rather than in the oven. Biscuits taste best when baked at 200 to 240°C, and sponge cakes taste best when baked at 170 to 200°C. Bread was better at temperatures between 180 and 240°C, but there were too many other factors affecting its quality. In true electrical engineering spirit, Gumaer concluded that “the art of cooking with electricity can be reduced to an exact science.”

Electric toy stoves as educational tools

I'm teaching an introductory Women's and Gender Studies class this semester, and I've been teaching my students about Lionel's toy oven. They were terrified of the inherent danger. One incredulous student kept asking, “Is this true? Is this not a joke?” Instead of learning to cook with a toy that can heat up to 260°C, many of us grew up with an Easy-Bake oven. The 1969 model could reach temperatures of about 177°C using two 100-watt incandescent bulbs. It was still hot enough to cause burns, but somehow it seemed safer. (Since 2011, Easy-Bakes has used a heating element instead of light bulbs.)

The boys were offered the Queasy Bake Cookerator, designed to make “disgusting-looking snacks that taste great.” Strong

The Easy-Bake I had wasn't particularly gender specific. It was orange-brown and was supposed to look like another newfangled appliance of the time, the microwave oven. But by the time my students played with the Easy-Bake ovens, the models were painted in girly shades of pink and purple. In 2002, Hasbro briefly tried to lure boys with Kitchen baking oven Queasywhich the company sold with disgusting-sounding products such as Chocolate Crud Cake and Mucky Mud. The promotion did not work, and the toy was soon withdrawn.

Likewise, Lionel's line of electric toys did not last long on the market. Launched in 1930, it was discontinued in 1932, but this may have had more to do with timing. The toy cost $29.50, which is the equivalent of a man's suit, a new bed, or a month's rent. In the midst of a global depression, a toy stove was overkill. Lionel returned to selling electric trains to boys.

My students discussed whether cooking was still a gendered activity. While they agreed that cooking falls disproportionately on women even now, they acknowledged the rise in popularity of male chefs and noted that television cooking shows are closing the gender gap. To our surprise, we discovered that one of the students in the class, Haley Matts, had competed and won Chopped Junior at 12 years old.

As a child, Hayley had a play kitchen that was completely fake: fake food, fake pans, fake dishes. She completed her apprenticeship in the Easy-Bake Oven, but truly began cooking the same way girls have done for centuries, learning alongside their grandmothers.

Part continuation of the series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the limitless potential of technology.

A shortened version of this article will appear in the December 2025 print issue entitled “Too Hot to Handle.”