Getting Started with Energy-Efficient Cooking: A Hay Box

By the end of World War I, cooking boxes or hay boxes became an implement of war on the Home Front, of sorts, as they were used to compensate for fuel shortages not just in the UK and the US but also, for example, in Germany. You boil the food, then let it finish cooking in an insulated box. The gas, oil, or coal you'd otherwise use for cooking the food after it's been brought to a boil, is saved.

Mrs. C.S. Peel published the second edition of her "Daily Mail" cookery book in 1919. It describes an elaborate box made of a wood packing case, lined with newspaper. Over the paper, flannel or felt is "neatly" nailed on. Balls of newspaper cushion the bottom of the box, 3 inches deep, and the pot or lidded casserole dish is put in. More balls of newspaper are crowded in until the pot is surrounded.

These weren't called only 'Cooking Boxes' but also 'hay boxes', because often wooden crates stuffed with hay were used. You will see this variant in the British television series Wartime Farm or Further Back in Time for Dinner. Mrs. Peel included instructions for it right after the instructions for the newspaper ball variant. In World War I and its immediate aftermath, it's also what the subjects of the Kaiser were using.

Construction of a hay box cooker
Photograph by Marie Goslich. Taken between 1914-1918.
Found on Wikimedia Commons.

Because I didn't have a wooden box, I made my own cooking receptacle with a cardboard box and the balls of newspaper. Regular folded newspapers, pot holders, and tea towels are layered on top until I'm satisfied the heat can't escape much.

But while I air the box for several days after each use, the cardboard box is damaged by the steam of the food. It also absorbs food smells. So it needs to be renewed periodically.

*

Real hayboxes are an art form.

Like this beautiful 'marmite' prepared by family members presumably for a Norwegian soldier in the 1940s and now displayed in the Museum of the Bretagne:

Marmite norvégienne - Musée de Bretagne*
1940-44, Found on Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Or like this Ikea-esque blue Danish creation:

Danish Design Haybox - Høkasse (2009)
Author & date of photograph: Vibeke Danmark, 2013
Found on Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-3.0 license)

* The museum added this description of the Norwegian box in Wikimedia Commons: 'Of family manufacture, this Norwegian cooker box is made of an osier receptacle lined with varying pieces of upholstery fabric [moquette] and cloths. Two pillows could be slipped inside to improve the thermal insulation at the top of this kitchen utensil in which cooking was done. The osier lid is lined with a piece of upholstery fabric [moquette]. The whole is draped in a 'bag' of upholstery fabric whose four flaps fold over the lid.' (My translation; it might be inaccurate.)

*

The best pans to use in a haybox are casseroles, block tin, or enameled pans 
The Daily Mail cookery book

I haven't tried those. But, more importantly, as Mrs. Peel mentions: if you don't have neat little handles that lie close to the sides, tucking the pot into the box is awkward.

Cooking box in the Göpelschauer Museum in Seestermühe (Germany)
Photograph by Frank Schwichtenberg, ca. 2010
Found on Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-3.0 license)

Mrs. Peel advises:

Dish	Time on Fire.	In Haybox.
Lentil Soup	3/4 hour.	4 hours.
Potato Soup	1/4 hour.	1.5 hours.
Fish stewed	3 minutes boiling.	0.5 hours.
Oats	5 minutes boiling.	2.5 hours.
Potatoes	5 minutes.	1.5 hours.
Boiled Rice	2-3 minutes boiling.	2.5 hours.
Old Vegetables	18-20 minutes.	2.5-3 hours.

Adapted from pp. 16 and 18, The Daily Mail cookery book

I've generally found her times on the long side. I work with 1 or 2 litres, smaller quantities that are easy to heat and easy to keep hot.

Potatoes in cubed pieces, boiled carrots, beetroot, and tinned beans might require longer boiling than, for example, rice or apple sauce. But I've cooked all of them with the haybox without disaster.

(But mung beans took an incredibly long time to cook. They look like infinitesimal beads and would seem fast to cook; but they would have stayed hard if I hadn't rescued them from the haybox again and returned them to the stovetop.)

*

For the sake of food safety, I'll stress her advice:

• All food must be brought to boiling point and must be actually boiling when put into the haybox
• And, especially if food has been in the box for more than 2 hours, Food must be re-heated before serving.

*

I also like hayboxes for reasons besides energy efficiency:

1. Letting Me Leave the Kitchen

The food doesn't require eternal vigilance. I bring it to a boil, stow it away into the box, and go off again to work at my laptop (or do something more lighthearted) until I have time to eat.

Mrs. Peel mentions this benefit in her cookbook, and Cornell University home economics researchers did in the US in 1920 too:

If fuel is being burned, there is always more or less uneasiness about leaving the house or the room in which food is being cooked. The amount of heat may vary or the food may be forgotten, with the result that the food may stick to the bottom of the utensil and burn. This gives a poor product and makes dishwashing a difficult task. The fireless cooker makes it possible to leave the food without worrying about the results. Thus other occupations may be carried on while the food is cooking.

Fireless and Steam-Pressure Cookers

2. Keeping Food Warm Until Everyone's At the Table

It's good for keeping delivery food warm until everyone has returned from work in the evenings.

Again, the researchers had the same idea 100 years ago:

The fireless cooker is found to be a time-saver when the various members of the household have their meals at different hours because food may be kept hot in it until each member is ready to be served.

***

Note: American wartime brochures also recommend sawdust as an alternative to hay or newspaper insulation. Asbestos, however, is obviously a terrible idea because of the likely health impact.

*

Sources

The Daily Mail cookery book [Hathi Trust]
Mrs. C.S. Peel, ed. London: Associated Newspapers (1919)

Fireless and Steam-Pressure Cookers [Internet Archive]
Ithaca, NY: State Extension Service in Home Economics, The New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University (1920)

How to build and use a fireless cooker [Internet Archive]
Creswell, Mary Ethel and Ola Powell. Washington, D.C.: United States. Office of Extension Work in the South (1916)

Let the fireless cooker help you cook [Internet Archive]
Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Agriculture [and] U.S. Food Administration (1918)

Wartime Farm (BBC Two) 2012

Further Back in Time for Dinner (BBC Two) 2017