1939 Revere Ware - most beautiful classic modern?  

Okay, master, if you say this is the best to cook with...
I will keep an open mind and explore it. But I am going to have to overcome a lot of legacy irritation with stainless steel and here is why? Rapid heating cook ware, while energy efficient, is actually harder for me to cook with in most cases, because it does heat so fast. When I cook, I often have several things going on the burners that are eventually to be combined. I like working with cast iron cookware precisely, because it migrates through its temperature changes deliberately and, so, gives me time to assess just the right temperature I want to cook something at. I also sometimes like to defy recipes and cook certain things on the heat up, rather than at precisely the right temperature called for. The slow temperature migrations also allow me more time to do things as I get ready for the moment I begin cooking. My great pleasures in cooking come from waiting for the right moment, and from riding the food up heat up cycles. With stainless steel, I find my ingredients getting too hot and too cold too fast. I have to cook quickly, make snap decisions, and yo yo up and down in temperatures to get it just right. Heat up cycles happen too fast. Part of good cooking is watching the ingredients transmogrify before your eyes. I like to cook the way I make love, deliberately. I went through a phase where I emulated the Italian cooks in San Francisco working 12 burners at once; throwing ingredients in one pan, shaking and rattling other pans, throwing the ingredients in the air, banging salt and pepper shakers around like a juggler, circus poring the olive oil, or the alcohol and flaming the latter high and fast. Doing that, nothing beat thin SS, or the cheapest aluminum possible. But I don't cook that way anymore. I cook to eat. I want my food to taste like it was cooked by a French or Italian grand mother from a small town, or a farm, not by a chef from an academy.
Why?

pt.2
Because when I actually rented a tiny Peugeot one trip to France, and spent the entire trip stopping in small towns, staying in chambres, and working hard to get to know some local folks, I found to my lasting surprise that I liked French home cooking a lot better than I liked French restaurant cooking, which, by the way, I liked alot. Not sure WHY this surprised me, for the same holds true in USA and even more so in Mexico. Home cooking is where the truly definitive dishes of a country are made. So I went looking for all the old cast iron cook ware I recalled my grand mothers using--and they were damned good cooks, given the ingredients they had to work with--and I began to cook deliberately, the way I recalled them cooking. I call it cooking like a good witch tending a cauldron (or in my case a warlock), rather than like a chef trying to fit as brilliantly as possible within the time constraints of restaurant cooking. I also have a perhaps irrational dislike of cleaning stainless steel. It has to be cleaned so thoroughly to look nice. I'm really fond of just rinsing and wiping off cast iron. Frankly, I hate to use soap on cast iron. No, my pans and pots are not immaculate, but man do they make food that tastes good.
Having said all of the above, I'm going to look into these Sirrocos, based on the virtues of the designer, whom I've heard knows his stuff. 🙂

You
might check out all the pages of the Demeyere site; it seems they've gone deep into the matters of heat transfer, etc. They seem to know their metals. . .!
That said, I agree about a cast iron skillet. I've never seen the need to go beyond that. Teflon ? Pfui. Just let that old iron build up it's natural surface. You can scrub it when you want to, but a simple rinse and wipe is all it normally needs.

Revere Ware is okay but I prefer.......
Beautiful stuff "jesgord" I collect all of these...but not my everyday pots. For everyday use I go for my All-Clad, love um.

Quite a debate, as usual
but I merely started this thread to show off the rare brochure page!
And, it's cool that a 70 year old design is still being sold and is consider standard high quality cookware.
Also, I have some pieces that are certainly 60 years old and the bakelite handles and lid handles are doing just fine.

Handwash?
>>>Also, I have some pieces that are certainly 60 years old and the bakelite handles and lid handles are doing just fine.
Barry...do you wash them by hand or dishwasher. I found that some of ours are begining to flake like sand...just a little..perhaps from 20 years of dishwashing and a pervious 15 of handwashing.

I usually hand wash
but I occasionally throw 'em in the dishwasher.
From time to time, I rub in a bit of salad oil in the handle, which seems to condition them a bit.

I agree dc on the...
fact that there are different choices and each and everyone has his own advantages and disadvantages. But I disagree on stainless steel being called rapid-heat-cookware. It is not because it is possible that you have to do it. In many cases Demeyere recommends lower temperatures and longer cooking times. Cast iron is certainly a slower reacting material and so you are right, you do not have to adjust it nearly as quickly. We use also some cast iron and keep a cast iron frying pan that Michael Lax gave us, just for omelets. It has been seasoned with salt and oil and never washed since. It behaves like the best non stick surface...but it is heavy! I should contradict myself and say that I don't think that there is a "best cookware" but within each material option there is...and sorry for all anodized aluminum fans...it is not part of my choices. By the way the Canadian team on the culinary olympics cooks on Demeyere cookware...I know, you do not like chefs unless they are grand mothers....so let's have a long discussion about this on a "terrasse" in the shadow of a flaky plane tree, not far from a good cellar of local Côte du Rhone, waiting for the "terrine de lapin en croute" to be served...and I think we will agree that the best is not made on top of the stove but comes out of the oven in a suitable piece of ovenware.