The Vintage Stove Built-In Soup Feature You Won't Find Anywhere Today

Vintage kitchens really had the greatest little design flourishes. Just from an appliances point of view, there's a lot of it has been forgotten over time, from functional pull-out work surfaces that saved space to built-in flour sifters for operational efficiency. And then there's this vintage stove that was designed and sold by General Electric's Hotpoint brand in the 1930s, which came with a feature specifically to make soup. It had a burner that could be lowered to the bottom of a hole in the range, so that the pot you were cooking your soup in fit snugly into the stove instead of sitting on top of it.

Outside of the practicality of there never being a risk of knocking the crockpot over, this addition, known as a deep well cooker, also saved electricity and kept the soup warm for longer. Moving the burner to the bottom of the stove allowed the pot to be heated and insulated from all sides. The Electric Hotpoint range of stoves from GE, which hit the stores in the late 1920s and 1930s, boasted of a slew of new features, starting with speed. According to GE's website, before the invention of the "Calrod", electric stoves took notoriously long to heat.

The stoves also came with features like automatic timing and temperature control. According to an advertisement announcing the launch of the stove, "A Detroit housewife cooked a dinner for six on her Hotpoint Range while she was playing Bridge 10 miles from her home. The dinner was ready to serve the minute she entered the house." And while that does sound like the modern dream, for vintage kitchen aficionados, it's the cooking well that remains the talking point nearly a century later.

General Electric's appliances division, set up in 1904, pioneered a long list of inventions that have played a big part in how we live today, from electric stoves, ovens, refrigerators, irons and washing machines. The American appliance brand has been owned by Chinese company Haier since 2016.

The love for the cooking well on the Hotpoint falls into a few different categories. First, there's a lot of love for its clever design. "I love this," one Redditor said. "Always gotta appreciate built-ins and space savers." Incidentally, another great design touch on this stove is a built-in socket for salt and pepper shakers right next to the burners. People on the same thread also remember the well being put to multiple uses, not just to make soup. One user said it was also used to keep water hot for coffee and tea. Another had seen it being put to a different use altogether. "My grandmother had one like this but she said her well was a deep fryer," they wrote. As one of the replies pointed out, using it as a fryer would make a lot of sense. "Recessing it makes sure that there's no chance of a big pot of hot oil spilling anywhere."

Then there are collectors. "We loved the '49 Hotpoint (with a deep well cooker) so much that just a couple of months ago we went and bought another one," another user posted. The final theme, of course, is sentimentality. "I loved watching my grandmother make soup on this stove," a Redditor posted. "I would love to have the same concept stove." For all you know, this may well join the list of kitchen features that boomers grew up with which suddenly became cool again.