Something very peculiar happened in the oven the other day.
Well truthfully, not my oven but my sister-in-law's.
She uses her forty year old Pyrex mixing bowl every time she bakes and after washing it she normally puts it in the warm oven (turned off after baking) to dry.
One day last week she turned on the oven to a fairly high heat, 190° - 200°C she said, and after a few minutes remembered that the Pyrex bowl was still in there. She grabbed the oven gloves and pulled the bowl out to find what she said was a kind of gooey, gluey puddle of a clear substance in the bottom of it.
Fearing the worst she dashed outside with the bowl and left it to cool down, thinking that she had had this bowl as a wedding present and would be sad to see the end of it. A few minutes later, it looked like the picture above.
The goo had solidified so she gingerly lifted it out and to her surprise discovered that the bowl, which was very scratched and worn, now appeared to be in immaculate, like new, condition. The substance she lifted out was a kind of solid ring of something that felt much like plastic.
I'm tempted to buy one of those worn out Pyrex bowls that are for nuppence in the local charity shops and try it myself to see if I can rejuvenate it in the same way. She says she tried it with her pudding basin but it didn't work because she thinks the oven wasn't hot enough.
I wouldn't recommend trying this at home yourself but any explanations would be welcome !!
I cannot work this out at all - and found no references on the net to this kind of rejuvenation. BUT I do know that the borosilicate glass used back in the 70s [when we were getting it as wedding presents] is not quite the same as the glass used now. Furthermore, that stuff was better at withstanding 'thermal shock'. I have a couple of IKEA metal trivets, one each side of the hob- where I can quickly put down pans/ovenware. But I notice that they now recommend HOT pyrex out of the oven is put on a cloth or a wooden trivet- as a metal one [esp if wet] can case the dish to crack or shatter. I remember vividly the Sunday when mum lifted a casserole out of the oven for lunch, and it just shattered and hot gravy and glass went everywhere. We had beans on toast for lunch, and she wept at the loss of her dish, and the waste of the meat and veg!!
ReplyDeleteAha, very interesting, I had no idea that the modern "Pyrex" is not the same as the original stuff - and not as robust obviously!
DeleteYour story of the shattered dish and wasted food reminded me of the day my mum opened the meat safe -yes, long before a fridge was a commonplace, affordable item - to find the bacon had "visitors". She threw it all away and we just had eggs and beans. She was so upset.
Yes Jean I remember the meat safe... A box with a fine metal grill as a door. Think ours was home made... Back in the days of the tin bath!!
ReplyDeleteWe lived in a council house which had a bathroom - just a bath and a washbasin in it. No heating. The toilet was still outside! I think the tin bath in front of the coal fire would have been a lot warmer!
DeleteThe house was built in the 1930’s, part of the massive between the wars house building programme intended to improve the lives of the working class by providing decent living accommodation - with modern features like gas lighting and a room with a bath in it!
As it happens, I had an old Pyrex mixing bowl (I can't remember how old but at least 30 years, I'd say) which had become so badly scratched that I bought a replacement a few months ago. I put the original bowl in the shed - I thought it might be useful for mixing filler or paint. When I read this, I retrieved the bowl at once and put it in the oven. Sadly, all I got was a hot, scratched bowl. Oh well, it was worth a try. I wonder if there was some sort of coating on that rejuvenated bowl.
ReplyDeletePhil, it will obviously have to remain a mystery!
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