Not much to tell, at least not with humour -- it wasn't funny at the time! Basically, traditional ranges such as the solid fuel Rayburn in the house when we bought it vent the oven into the flue1. This reduces (read 'eliminates') cooking smells emanating from the oven, so if one forgets there's something in the oven, no smell will remind you that it's done-overdone-past done-past being something to give to the dogs. I put a double batch of a particularly nice chocolate fruit cake in and completely forgot about it for about twice the necessary time. Tragic. So I added another token to the token system I used to remind myself the air feed was open (I once opened the vent to enliven the fire, then forgot I'd done so and left to do the shopping. Fortunately I remembered and returned before the header tank melted. It has been known to happen, apparently).
The lack of smell doomed me to a different problem once, too. I needed to prevent a hard frost killing plants in my small unheated greenhouse, and it occurred to me that bricks-rocks warmed in the oven would help to do so. So I gathered an buttortment from the garden in the dark and popped them into the warming oven, not noticing that one was an to clean that oven, and I smelt nothing wrong until I opened the door to put them in the greenhouse :-(
regards sarah
1 Health and Safety would probably quite literally have kittens if you did this now and they found out. In some wind conditions flue gases could flow out through the oven into the house and ... WE'LL ALL DIE HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY, I TELL YOU. In the 6? years we used the Rayburn, I never noticed a problem. But perhaps I'm dead and never noticed.
-- Think of it as evolution in action.
