The kitchen’s grip: Energy, cooking, and gendered work in rural France (1860–1960)

Abstract Drawing on a 1936 ethnographic enquiry and specialised literature, including magazines on domestic appliances and rural life, this article examines how wood, coal, bottled gas, and electricity coexisted – rather than replaced one another – in rural French households from the 1860s to the 1950s. New fuels and kitchen technologies were layered onto existing practices, which required farm women to juggle multiple energy sources and cooking tools across seasons. Cast-iron stoves and portable cookers, acquired according to economic (wealth, occupation), environmental (deforestation, proximity to mines), and geographic (latitude, altitude) constraints, reduced the need for constant fire monitoring and reshaped domestic labour. They facilitated more complex cooking and freed up time – only for it to be consumed by multitasking across expanded household and agricultural duties. The study challenges linear narratives of technological progress, foregrounds addition over substitution, and asks who truly benefited from these innovations – and at what cost.