Range finder

[Jonathan Day]

At the risk of diverting this topic onto the problems/benefits with an Aga, I'll just say that

- the flat tops don't cool down all that quickly. It's easy enough to compensate

- on our older Aga, at least, I can usually smell what's cooking (though my wife and the nanny often cannot) and sense how far it has come. Our electric convection ovens actually have a tighter seal, and you can't smell the food, though you can see it. All that said, every nanny we've had has incinerated some forgotten dish, and we end up discovering a piece of coal in the oven that was formerly potatoes, roast, whatever, and had been left there for several days

- the Aga ovens cook beautifully, especially for roasts. It makes superb stocks. And, I think because there is no convection fan, it just doesn't scorch things as easily as some ovens. And you can make good pizza right on the floor of the roasting oven.

I don't think I'll persuade "enthusiast" or anyone who doesn't get on with one of these cookers. It took us a couple of years to get really comfortable with it, and that included enduring an agonising day's cooking class with Mary Berry, the queen of Agas, including all the frilly curtains, twee country town, and other stuff associated with these things. Once you got past the patronising tone, though, there was some good information imparted. And that's the other thing about Agas: there is a "back story" associated with them that some of us don't care for.

But a final comment, which takes us back to Thom's original topic. Cooking on the Aga and learning to cope with its idiosyncrasies has been very useful. It has helped me be comfortable with wood-fired stoves and ovens, as well as with a professional gas stove that doesn't have an external temperature indicator for the ovens. As Andy says, you basically cook at one or two different temperatures, and you learn to sense where the food is and how to get it where you want it. I just don't see the need for a control to set the oven at 125.4 degrees. I don't do much pastry anymore; just as pastry calls for more precise measurement than non-pastry work it also requires more precision temperature settings in the oven. Your experience may vary...