Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 149, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1919 — FIRELESS COOKER AS ICE BOX IN SUMMER [ARTICLE]

FIRELESS COOKER AS ICE BOX IN SUMMER

Construction on Same Principle as Refrigerator. When Used to Keep Food Cool It Must Be Chilled to Desired Tem-perature—-Is Convenient to Make Many Cold Drinks. (Prepared te the United States Department of Agriculture.) The fireless cooker can be used to keep food cold as well as hot, because heat cannot pass in to warm the contents any more than It can pass out and cool them. In this respect it works very much like a refrigerator. In fact, both the cooking box find the ice box are constructed on the same principle—supplying a constant-tem-perature chamber with non-conducting walls. Well-constructed ice boxes are made with some insulating material or dead air space between the inner and outer walls, and the covers and doors close in such a way as to prevent heat passing in or out. Of course, the more often the doors are opened, the more heat passes in and the more quickly the ice melts and the temperature rises. Fortunately this is less serious than the loss of heat when a fireless cooker is opened. When, the cooker is used to keep food cool it must J»e chilled to the desired temperature before it is put in. The more nearly heat-proof the walls the longer the material keeps its original temperature. Ice cream put in a well-made Qreless cooker ought to remain firm as long as if It were packed In salt and ice In an ordinary freezer. Many cooks prefer to pack such halffrozen desserts as mousse or parfait in

a fireless cooker rather than in a freezer because there is less danger of them becoming too cold and hard. It is often convenient to make cold drinks, like, lemonade or fruit punch, some hours before they are used. By chilling them and placing in the cooker they can be kept cool without ice. Sometimes a little ice is put into the box with the food to make it cooler, just as hot soapstones or bricks are put in to make it hotter. Because there is less space to keep cool, much less ice needed than in the chamber of an icebox. The ice in the cooker melts slowly and so keeps the temperature down much longer than if it were used in an‘open pitcher. ' Simple directions for making a fireless cooker may be had by writing the United States department of agriculture for Bulletin No. 771, “Home-Made Fireless Cookers and Their Use.”