The History of the Oven and Hob

Cooking over an open hearth was the norm across Britain for most of history — the enclosed, controllable oven and hob most of us now take completely for granted is really a story of the last two centuries, and Britain played a genuinely significant early role in it.

The first gas cooker

James Sharp, a Northampton ironmonger, patented a gas oven design in 1826 and began selling gas cookers commercially from 1836 — among the earliest gas cookers sold anywhere. Adoption was slow at first; gas supply infrastructure was limited, and many households remained wary of cooking with gas at all. It took the second half of the 19th century, as gas mains gradually extended through British towns and cities, for gas cookers to become a realistic option for ordinary households.

Electricity enters the kitchen

Electric cookers followed later, becoming commercially available from the late 19th century, but for decades remained a comparatively expensive alternative to gas in most British homes, since gas supply networks were far more extensive than domestic electricity through the early 20th century. Electric ovens only became truly competitive with gas as national electricity infrastructure expanded through the interwar and post-war periods.

The rise of the fan oven

Conventional ovens heat unevenly by nature — hotter at the top, cooler at the bottom. The fan (or “fan-assisted”) oven, which uses an internal fan to circulate hot air for more even cooking, became a mainstream domestic feature from the mid-to-late 20th century onward, and is now the default expectation in most new UK ovens, alongside the older static/conventional heating option many recipes still reference by habit.

Induction hobs

The most significant recent shift on the hob side has been induction cooking — using electromagnetic fields to heat the pan directly rather than heating an element or flame that then heats the pan. Though the underlying technology dates back further, induction hobs only became widely affordable and common in UK kitchens in the last couple of decades, prized for how quickly they heat and how precisely they can be controlled compared with older ceramic or gas hobs.