I have a church ladies recipe book from 1913 and some of the recipes use measures like a piece of butter the size of an egg or cook over a low fire…back when wood fired ranges were still in use. I also learned some of my grandmother’s recipes from my mother that were based only on rough estimates of quantities.
Must have been real hard regulating the temperature in a wood stove!
I bought several pieces of cast iron cookware around 1970 at “absolute auctions” at farms in Missouri. I could get a circa 1890 or 1900 frying pan that had been in the family for only $1. Some of them have the ring cast into the bottom so they would fit into the wood stove opening after you removed the cover plate.