Analysis: when it came to advertising new electric cookers, the ESB enlisted Christmas food and Ireland's first celebrity chef to sell their wares
On December 20th 1957, The Cork Examiner reported on a full house at the "Christmas Fare" demonstration of electric cooking in the ESB's demonstration kitchen on Caroline Street. 'Emphasis was on economy and at the conclusion of the demonstration…which consisted of cooking a complete Christmas dinner, including a 16-lb turkey, the meter reading showed a consumption of six units, which on the domestic tariff rate of charge works out at a cost of less than 9d. A magnificent cake on display was presented to the only person who guessed its correct weight.’
Electricity in the home was promoted for efficiency, cleanliness and, above all in the economically depressed years of 1950s Ireland, value for money. The three outstanding benefits of electricity in the home combined well in the ESB’s advertising promotions of electric cookers.
These appliances promised clean, quick, and economic cooking with cooker models to suit all needs and pockets. According to the Examiner, all the newest models were fitted with ‘the revolutionary Speed-O-matic hotplate now fitted to all standard electric cookers’ with the estimated cost of cooking per person per day estimated at ‘three halfpence for all meals of the family’.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, Pat McGrath reports on the role played by women in the effort to bring electricity to rural Ireland
Technological innovation delivered to homes by electricity set the old and the new in contrast and competition. The interplay between traditional and modern especially in the realm of women's kitchen work became a space for the ESB to promote the benefits of electricity through creative campaigns.
Cookery and the means of cooking was an obvious target. Older means of cooking on kitchen ranges and stoves continued with popular brands like Aga, Stanley and Rayburn advertised to those who could afford to purchase and run them. While cooking over an open hearth was still customary in parts of rural Ireland into the 1950s, electricity and gas cookery had the additional draw of being convenient and controllable.
The competition between gas and electricity, where both were touted with the conflicting claim of being the most economical way to cook, was played out in organised public cookery demonstrations that were designed to convince attending housewives of the merits of cleaner electricity above gas or gas above electricity. As marketing campaigns, they were well crafted to entertain and secure purchase or HP deals.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Documentary On One, Then There Was Light looks at the story of rural electrification, including the tales of fear and hope, and love and loss as the nation got lit up
The Christmas season was a perfect time to direct attention to the merits of gas and electric cooking. Traditional Christmas fare like fruit cakes, puddings and large birds were expensive in terms of ingredient procurement and fuel costs for cooking.
Additionally, the successful production of these seasonal items, especially the making of the Christmas cake, were invested with reputation and gender values. The baking skills of the woman and her associated cookery reputation were demonstrated in the quality of the Christmas cake. It served the whole Christmas period and beyond and was offered to family and friends as a gesture of seasonal hospitality.
The sensitivities of women and their baking reputation connected to their successful, or otherwise, work in the kitchen were seized upon by the gas and electricity companies in their promotion of services and products. This was especially so at Christmas, when promotional activities intensified. Organised promotions included demonstrations of appliance functionality, cooking by expert demonstrators, quizzes and prize-giving, take-home cooking books and booklets, and often a screening of a film directed to women's interests.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Drama On One, #Maura Laverty This Was Your Life is a sparkling play by Yvonne Quinn and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh that explores the life of celebrity chef. broadcaster, playwright, novelist, agony aunt and all-round trailblazer, Maura Laverty
In the lead-up to Christmas 1957, the Cork Gas Company hosted a fortnight of demonstrations that were well publicised and combined cookery with an exhibition of the newest gas appliances. But the ESB had an ace up its sleeve in their promotional campaigns as they had on board the well-known and acclaimed cookery writer, novelist and playwright, Maura Laverty.
Her cooking book, Kind Cooking (1946) combined lived, local, and personal anecdote and this accessible and relatable writing combined with her radio work made her a household name and an endearing 1940/50s-style celebrity cook. She hosted and worked closely with the ESB in its Radio Éireann sponsored programmes.
Kind Cooking was handed out as a prize at an ESB cooking demonstration in Cork, an event covered by the Examiner ‘The C.C.Y.M.S Hall was packed to capacity last night and dozens of disappointed housewives were turned away when the ESB embarked on its second night of cookery demonstrations, film shows and Competition Question Time…
"In between dishes, we were shown a delightful short film dealing with the involved processes in the production of nylon stockings, and a lively Question Time in which four ladies from the Irish Housewives Association pitted their knowledge against four more from various guilds of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association… Each competitor also received a copy of Maura Laverty’s "Kind Cooking"…’
In distributing cookery and recipe advice through these various media, Laverty brought credibility and appeal to the ESB’s extension of services. Her ESB-issued Christmas Fare booklets circulating since 1955 and re-issued in extended form in 1957, encapsulated both a desirable package of Christmas foods and were a lingering witness to the quiet revolution that was the Irish electrification scheme.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
