A chafing dish, fashionable in Edwardian times, is still useful for slow, even cooking, for flambeing, and for keeping foods warm on a buffet table. It can cook such foods as scrambled eggs, Welsh rarebit, panned oysters, and lobster newburg, or sauces in which to heat precooked foods. The fuel can be alcohol or canned heat.
To cook in a chafing dish, fill the fuel vessel and light the fuel with care. Insert the water pan and pour very hot water into it. Set the cooking pan over the water bath; if there is a wick, adjust it so that the water stays just below boiling. Proceed with your recipe.