[The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything, by Ruth Goodman, Liveright Publishing Corporation; 2020. xxi + 330 pp.]
The subtitle of Ruth Goodman’s book The Domestic Revolution doesn’t come close to describing what this book is really about. Yes, this book tells us a lot about coal and how it affected Victorian domestic life. But this book is really about how what we eat and how we prepare food has been closely tied to economic, industrial, and technological changes over 400 years of history.
Moreover, this book will provide some valuable perspective for anyone who thinks he or she spends a lot of time “slaving” over a hot stove. Whatever time we spend cooking and cleaning in the twenty-first century is nothing compared to the time, effort, expense, and planning that was needed to prepare meals for one’s family in centuries past. Coal made it all easier, even if meal prep remained generally arduous throughout the nineteenth century.
Goodman’s overall purpose in writing this book, she tells us, is to correct an error historians and social critics have made. The problem, she writes, is that “the influence of fuel on food has been overlooked.” That is, the food we eat and the way we prepare it is not a product of mere tastes in fashion. Rather, our dining customs and cuisine are also largely a product of “economic and technical pressures” that have been tied to transitions from wood-burning kitchens to coal-burning ones. She writes: “A new fuel [i.e., coal] had driven the development of a whole new way of cooking and a radically different diet. A menu based upon boiling and baking, with a side order of toast, was the cuisine that accompanied industrialization; cause and effect were intricately linked in a fossil fuel-burning age.”
Coal didn’t just heat the food, either. Coal—and the industrialization it fueled—also gave rise to new methods of preparation. As industrialization drove up real incomes and drove down the cost of manufacturing, iron implements became more affordable and far more common. Even working-class households increasingly could afford once-scarce items like iron grates for cooking. By the nineteenth century, ordinary people could even afford cast-iron ranges. Such luxuries were exceedingly rare before the age of coal, as was the convenience that came with coal-cooking and iron implements.
Goodman explains how prior to the age of coal, food preparation relied primarily on the burning of wood. This had many implications for both domestic life and the economy overall. In terms of life at home, preparing food with wood was more labor intensive than preparing food with coal. Wood fires are less consistent (in terms of temperature) and require more fuel more often than coal fires. Women who did the cooking—it was mostly women, of course—had to also be skilled in how different species of wood burned differently, and which types of fuel were most economical.
The implications for the larger economy were significant as well. Goodman observes that wood production…