[Sca-cooks] trivets and dutch ovens
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Wed Jun 22 15:38:38 PDT 2005
Nancy Kiel replied to me with:
> I was able to cook for 4 years at Colonial Williamsburg without using a
> trivet in the ovens. Of course, it is nice to have an actual hearth to
> cook on, and maybe that makes the difference between needing and not
> needing a trivet.
Yes, but there is a major difference between the stone ovens you were
using and a metal dutch oven over and under hot coals. You are talking
about using a single chamber rock or brick oven, right? Or are you
talking about using a dutch oven in a hearth? If the latter, you may
have just been able to control the heat better. If you are talking
about using a mass oven, the following applies.
With the dutch oven you are continuing to apply heat to the metal,
which will conduct it quite nicely to anything touching it inside,
which in our case, meant the bottom of the turnovers. In your case, the
temperature will be at its hottest when you first put the food in the
oven and from then on it will continue to go down. The more mass in the
oven, the slower the temperature will drop. But it isn't going to get
hotter. The temperature in the mass oven is also likely to be much more
evenly applied. In the dutch oven you can very likely have some hot
spots. The air space below the food helps even this out.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
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