The electric dinner was cooked at the tram shed

On August 29, 1892, one hundred guests sat down at Ottawa’s Windsor House hotel for an “electric banquet.” The menu claimed every item had been prepared with Thomas Ahearn’s newly patented electrical equipment—the first entire meal cooked by electricity.

It had not been cooked at the hotel.

The kitchen was in the sheds of the Ottawa Electric Railway. Ahearn’s oven was a brick structure about six feet wide, fitted with two heating elements drawing power generated at Chaudière Falls. Inside, there was room for a 21-pound roast of beef, a 13-pound roast of veal and three turkeys at once. Glass-covered peepholes let the cook inspect them without opening the doors.

The food was carried several blocks to the hotel by a special carriage. After dinner, the guests took a special electric tram back to the sheds to inspect the machinery and hear Ahearn explain it. He had remained behind to supervise the oven while they ate.

This was an appliance demonstration assembled from a transport system. Ahearn and his business partner Warren Soper operated the electric railway and were involved in the company supplying its power. The railway sheds offered heavy electrical service, space and technical staff before an ordinary kitchen could. The banquet’s invited officials, utility executives and reporters supplied the audience.

Ahearn’s patent had been granted nine days earlier. The hotel proprietor reportedly ordered an oven after the meal, but the design was too large and electricity too scarce and expensive for broad household use. Electric cooking would wait decades for houses and utilities to catch up.

The banquet is usually remembered as a first for the electric oven. Its odd logistics show something narrower. The future kitchen worked perfectly, provided it could borrow the infrastructure of a streetcar company and send dinner across town.