"Max Demian" wrote in message
o.uk...
Do they still use gas marks rather than degrees Celsius in gas ovens? I
haven't seen an explanation why gas ovens use these arbitrary numbers
rather than degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius), though I have some ideas why
it might have happened.

Yes I've never understood why gas ovens historically used arbitrary "gas
marks". I'm not sure whether modern gas cookers still have the oven
calibrated that way. I've never had one myself (it was always all-electric
or gas hob / electric oven), but my parents have an all-gas cooker, though
that's probably about 20 years old now so not an indicator of modern
practice. I remember them having to buy it as a panic purchase when their
old gas cooker, which they bought when they were married, so 56 years ago,
was condemned by the gas engineer who came to fix a slow leak from one of
the hob burners. I remember my mum had made a stew which she was going to
put in the oven as soon as the gas engineer had finished, and it had to go
in the fridge until they had a new cooker to cook it. And they had to live
on things that could be microwaved - they couldn't even heat up a pan of
baked beans or grill some toast.

I remember that it originally had a gas taper: a little jet on the end of a
plastic hose which you lit from a burner and then used to light an ignition
point on the floor of the oven or beside the burner of the grill. That gas
taper was condemned many years ago because the hose was too easy to trap in
the oven door - that was probably done about the time that the UK changed
over from "town gas" (manufactured in a "gas works" by roasting coal) to
"natural gas" in the early 70s. After that we had to use wooden spills to
light the oven and grill. I remember the little blanking plate that was
fitted where the plastic hose had connected on the side of the cooker. That
cooker had a feature that you don't get on many modern cookers - an
eye-level grill rather than one under the hob, maybe shared with a small
oven: eye-level makes it much easier to check that the grill has been lit
successfully (or left on accidentally), and to see how your bacon is
cooking.