For other stoves for cooking, see Portable stove and Improved cookstove. A kitchen stove, often called simply a stove or a cooker, is stove top kisses mac and cheese kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food.

In the industrialized world, as stoves replaced open fires and braziers as a source of more efficient and reliable heating, models were developed that could also be used for cooking, and these came to be known as kitchen stoves. The fuel-burning stove is the most basic design of a kitchen stove. Natural gas and electric stoves are the most common today in western countries. The choice between the two is mostly a matter of personal preference and availability of utilities. British English as well as an oven. A “drop-in range” is a combination stovetop-and-oven unit that installs in a kitchen’s lower cabinets flush with the countertop. Prior to the 18th century in Europe, people cooked over open fires fueled by wood.

In the Middle Ages, waist-high brick-and-mortar hearths and the first chimneys appeared, so that cooks no longer had to kneel or sit to tend to foods on the fire. Open fire systems had three significant disadvantages that prompted an evolutionary series of improvements from the 16th century onwards: it was dangerous, it produced much smoke, and the heat efficiency was poor. Attempts were made to enclose the fire to make better use of the heat that is generated and thus reduce the wood consumption. An early step was the fire chamber: the fire was enclosed on three sides by brick-and-mortar walls and covered by an iron plate. The modern kitchen range was invented by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford in the 1790s. As an active scientist and prolific inventor, he put the study of heat onto a scientific basis and developed improvements for chimneys, fireplaces and industrial furnaces, which led to his invention of the kitchen range. Section of Rumford fireplace, invented by Sir Benjamin Thompson.