You mean it's not just a missing burner!?!
Who knew!?

LOL, CEFreeman, that's what I used to think. It's actually an early form of crockpot/slow cooker. Pretty cool concept, but messy,evidently (just think about cleaning up down in there if something boiled over). Some of the electric ones did have a burner that you could lower to use the well feature.

We had one growing up. It's default position was level with the rest of the burners, coil electric. Whenever my mom made soup (mmmm, cabbage and short ribs) she'd drop the element down to the bottom and use it as a deep cooker. I thought everyone had one of those things.

There's some threads about deep well cookers on Automatic Washer. The consensus seems to be that they cook pretty well, but you won't find uses for them that often, so if you're looking for a vintage range with one, get one where the burner can be moved up and used as an ordinary surface burner. You have to use the cooker designed for that range; you can't put just any pot in there. And if you have a boil-over, it's a heck of a job to clean up the mess.

Thanks, fa_f3_20. I'd seen one thread over there and was very impressed that they all seemed to know the exact part number for the person who was asking. There's a Flickr set,too, but unfortunately the actual recipes posted there all seem to be for oven baking.

Of course, the fact that the pots were aluminum does give one pause. (I know it's debatable, but why chance it?)