one-pot cookery a vast subject, of particular interest to many groups: people with limited food-heating facilities (e.g. only one burner); those who have to cope with a shortage of fuel; anyone who has to produce a lot of hot food several hours hence with no supervision in the meanwhile; and also (perhaps on a trivial plane, yet not to be dismissed as an entirely negligible interest) those who seek to minimize washing up.
A remarkable survey of the whole subject and its iconography by Bertram Gordon and Lisa Jacobs-McCusker (1989) begins with a list which includes the following items: the Eintopf, Romertopf, crockpot, stew pot, chowder, casserole, olla podrida, hutspot or hotchpotch, Lancashire hotpot and irish stew, pot-au-feu, hochepot, cassoulet, puchero, and cocido, examples where various ingredients which might otherwise have been cooked separately all go into the one pot. The expression ‘one pot’ is normally taken to include in its meaning ‘rather than the several which might have been used’. Gordon and Jacobs-McCusker devote special attention to the political and social importance with which the Eintopf was invested in Germany in the period between the World Wars, especially the 1930s. Hitler and the Nazi party in effect hijacked one-pot cookery for their own ends—fortunately with no lasting effects; no political stigma adheres to the practice, either in Germany or elsewhere.
