The most important tool in a kitchen is obviously the cooking range.  Here the country dweller has a choice of bottled gas, electricity, or oil as fuels.  What he decides to use may depend on personal preference, availability, or cost of installing and operating.  Where service is dependable and a reasonable cooking rate prevails, there is no better method of cooking than by electricity.  Clean, odorless and easily regulated, its advantages are obvious.  But no electric light and power company can afford to run its cables underground in the country.  The service lines are on poles and extend over a large area.  Nature has no regard for the convenience of either the company or its patrons.  A thunderbolt may knock out a transformer, or a tree may be blown down and carry nearby electric lines with it.  Repair men are continually on the job with a well-run company and work speedily and faithfully but they cannot be everywhere at once.  Service may be interrupted for ten minutes or for several hours.  In such emergencies, it is well to have a stop gap, such as an inexpensive two-burner oil stove.  It may not be used more than twice a year but it is there when needed.

The devotees of the tank gas method of cooking are many.  It works the same as gas from city mains except that your supply is piped in from an individual tank which is installed outside the house and replenished monthly by the company supplying such fuel.  The initial cost plus installation and operation about equals that of electricity but no cataclysm of nature will cause it to fail.

Cheapest of all is the kerosene oil stove.  These range all the way from the modest two-burner table stove to the pretentious six-burner type with insulated oven and porcelain finish.  Gasoline burning ranges are also to be had on this order.  The initial cost of even the most elaborate oil or gasoline stove is considerably less than for one designed for either electricity or bottled gas and the expense of operation is also less.  But they have certain disadvantages.  With the best of management there is a slight odor.  If out of adjustment they smoke or go out and they are unpleasant to clean.  Further, although we struggled with one for seven years, we never found any satisfactory means of broiling meat with oil as a fuel.

No family relishes the idea of having porterhouse or sirloin steaks taken right out of their lives, so some other device is necessary, such as a charcoal broiler or the old-fashioned, long-handled broiler held over the fireplace coals or, in winter, those of the furnace.  One may argue brightly that meat cooked by these primitive methods has a superior flavor, but it is definitely veering away from the assembly idea and most certainly does not make for harmony in the kitchen.  If a charcoal broiler is employed, somehow it never reaches the proper state of incandescence at the right time.  If the fireplace is the scene of operation, it is invariably a roaring inferno at the time the steak should be cooked.  One waits for the desired bed of coals, of course, while ominous head shakings and rumblings from the kitchen proclaim that the rest of the dinner is done, is dried up, is ruined.