A is for Aga

The heart of our childhood home was the Aga – the cast iron, two door, creamy primrose coloured Aga ... we cooked with it, we hugged around it, we warmed our hands on it, we dried our clothes on it, we kept the winter chills away ...

... but more it was the endless breakfasts, lunches, cakes for tea, and suppers that were cooked on it ... the families could not be without their Agas – grandmothers had them, aunts had them, this generation has them ...  (I haven’t, but I’d love one!).

A Swedish design – the Aga was invented in 1922 by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish physicist Dr Gustaf Dalen (1865-1937), and first imported into Britain in 1929.

Although he had lost his sight in an explosion, he was inspired to create a better, more efficient cooker for his wife, who constantly had to tend to their old-fashioned range and was exhausted from it.

Dalen created a cast-iron cooker capable of every kind of cooking simultaneously, through its two large hotplates and two ovens: the AGA was born.

1938 Aga

The anthracite (slow burning coal) was scuttled into the ‘fire’ through the left hand hot plate, the centre piece of which was lifted off to expose the fire box.

Our family and kitchen revolved around the Aga – certainly inspiring me to cook the first meal I remember – breakfast in bed for my parents – the full works ... mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs from our chickens, chipolata sausages, bacon, fried bread ... tea provided by the Teasmade – an innovation in the 1950s ...

Some interesting snippets via The DailyTelegraph in 2009, when they searched out the oldest working models, and stories from the Aga hearthside ... some very amusing! – e.g. the peeking children ....

That is A for Aga from Aspects of British Cookery

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters Inspirational Stories
# 492 in the challenge