From the "random observations" thread:
Jennifer wrote: ↑23 Nov 2019, 17:20
I've been watching old Flintstones episodes (there's a big backlog of them on my DVR, since one of the cable companies airs multiple episodes per week), and one not-uncommon occurrence, which I've seen on countless other sitcoms and similar things from that era (though I can't recall any specifics) is: either Betty or Wilma will suddenly realize that whatever they've got cooking in their oven is burning or about to burn [
cue mad dash to the kitchen]. Not that TV comedies or dramas (let alone the prehistoric Honeymooners) were ever intended as documentary slices of life, but I doubt the joke would be that common if there weren't
some reality behind it.
And I realize: neither Jeff nor I have ever had that particular problem when making a recipe we'd made many times before -- not because we're time savants or genius cooks, but because we've always had plenty of timed noisemakers (sometimes built directly in to the oven) to remind us when a given recipe's recommended cooking or baking time had elapsed.
Were noisy kitchen timers actually, like, not a commonplace thing in the early 60s and before? Or was there something about ovens back then heating things more unevenly than nowadays, thus making burned/overcooked food more likely?
Or was this simply another pure-TV trope on par with "housewives back then often wore stockings, high heels and pearls while doing the housework?"
Aresen wrote: ↑23 Nov 2019, 17:56
I remember our oven had a timer that was purely mechanical. I
think it could be set to control on/off, but I'm not sure. This was late 1950s - early 1960s.
The only time I remember food getting burned was on the barbeque - and that was dad's doing.
D.A. Ridgely wrote: ↑23 Nov 2019, 18:36
As I recall, my mother had a mechanical timer she would use when baking. Otherwise, she'd just note the time and keep an eye on the clock in the kitchen. I can recall television ads for ovens with built-in clocks / timers as a child, so obviously they were, um, selling point prior to being standard features.
Ovens are still notoriously undependable as far as I'm concerned, especially as they get older. Ours runs cool by 10-20 degrees according to our oven thermometer. *shrug*
Was discussing this with Jeff last night and initially he proposed it was perhaps a comedy trope/holdover from vaudeville -- standard ineptitude for comic effect, the old joke about "such a bad cook, I can burn water" and similar things, and brought up other examples such as the ur-comedy housewife Lucy, whose whole schtick was what a hilariously incompetent homemaker [among other things] she was.
Which led to other Flintstone-era comedy tropes you don't see much anymore, especially on "incompetent homemaker" themes: such as, the man's first clue that something's wrong with his wife is, his shirts all start getting black scorch-marks from where she did the ironing.
And I mentioned: "incompetent homemaker" was indeed a fairly common comedy trope for awhile, which you don't see much anymore... but in all seriousness, being a "competent homemaker" (not "Martha Stewart genius-level" homemaker, merely "competent") is a lot easier today than it was in Lucy Ricardo's day, or what the Flintstones parodied a decade or so later, especially if your home is equipped with a washer and dryer in addition to "standard" kitchen appliances. I'd guess any of us here, man or woman, even those of us whose housekeeping leans toward the "indifferent" side, could be a "competent homemaker" today, and I definitely include myself there.
But ... I don't know how many of my year-2019 Competent Adult/Homemaker life skills would carry over anytime before maybe the 1970s or 80s (depending on whether I'm "reasonably prosperous" or "usually close to broke").
Here's some basic CAH requirements: Feed yourself and your family nutritious food within your budget; keep everyone properly clothed, which includes not only acquiring clothes in the first place, but making everyone's dirty laundry clean and presentable; maintain a certain minimal level of household cleanliness, including "dishware and cookware needs to be clean before you use it"; and a few other things.
Affordable food? E-Z. You can manage it despite basically zero cooking skills (as I did my first few years of adulthood) -- canned or frozen heat-n-serve, Kraft mac-n-cheese dinner, cold cut or cold spread sandwiches on bread, etc. Of course, once I acquired basic 21st-century cooking skills I could feed myself far better for far less money -- but I use a lot of modern ingredients or conveniences Lucy didn't have and Wilma didn't parody: a microwave, two slow cookers, food processor, many of the aforementioned timers in addition to the one built-in to the stove, and a couple other small-appliance things. (When a certain package arrives from Amazon, I will also have two identical cold-brew coffeemaking pitchers.) Other people nowadays swear by their instant pots or sous vide kits or other recent things. Also, we all have access to modern western supermarkets or at least online ordering options, where we can affordably buy many ingredients and spices which back then we either couldn't get at all, or it would be ridiculously expensive.
Clean respectable clothing? Also E-Z, and quite affordable (even for new-retail shoppers) provided you're not determined to have all the newest trends and high-end labels. To avoid wrinkled clothing (at least in my experience), there's no need to spend time ironing and also run the risk of scorching a garment; I put almost everything in the dryer, in small enough loads so there's plenty of room for clothes to tumble around, and as long as I remove the wrinkle-prone clothes from the dryer and put them on hangers immediately after the dryer stops, everything is fine.
Back then, dryers and the electricity to power them were far more expensive, so more likely you have to spend time hanging laundry to dry, time taking it in, and time ironing most of it. And run the risk of scorching with the iron. And, since clothing was much more expensive in those days, you certainly needed some basic sewing/clothing-repair skills which for the most part aren't necessary nowadays (as we've
discussed before).
And so on. Point is, while the specific "Oh dear; my roast/cake/bread is burning in the oven" problem may have been more of a sitcom trope than a real-life thing back in the day, the overall idea of an "incompetent homemaker" probably did exist more often in reality (though not to the hilarious extremes Lucy and Co. took it to).
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