Oh, that's a good point. I suppose charcoal was something relegated to specific purposes (like blacksmithing and whatnot) rather than something the average Joe's going to waste on cooking?
And it leaves enough wiggle room for the author to stroke his ego about wasting expensive fuel on banal things such as food too
A charcoal fire will be hotter than a wood fire. So if you need to cook something with really high temps (typically meats), charcoal will work better. (On the flip side, one of the complaints about alcohol stoves is that their low rate of heat generation results in lower temps.)
Long-winded engineering explanation follows for anyone interested:
A lot of people misunderstand the relationship between fuels (energy) and temperature. You may have heard that "burning xxx produces a fire of y degrees." That's totally wrong.
Temperature is determined by the rate energy is put in, minus the rate energy is taken out. When cooking with wood, the rate energy goes in is limited by how quickly the wood burns. The rate energy goes out depends on where the heat can escape to (into the food/water, into the air, into the structure surrounding the fire. That's why you can raise the temperature by:
- Enclosing the fire (limits how much heat is lost to the air, so decreases rate of heat loss)
- Fanning the flames (makes the wood burn faster, so increases the rate that heat is released)
- Using charcoal ("burns faster" than wood - has a higher rate of releasing heat energy than wood).
The rate of heat loss is proportional to the difference in temp between the the hot object and the cold surroundings. So the hotter your stove gets, the faster it loses heat even with everything else remaining the same. When you're first starting the fire, the stove temp is room temp. The rate of heat loss is lower than the rate of heat generation, so the temp goes up. Eventually the temp goes up to the point where the rate of heat loss equals the rate of heat generation. And the temp stabilizes there.
