--- title: "A La Cornue stove not lighting, and twenty other things it does without explaining itself." description: "La Cornue stove not lighting, a burner that will not stay lit, a yellow flame, a cracked French top, an oven that runs hot." url: "https://la-cornuemiami.support/symptoms/" date_modified: "2026-09-03" --- # Symptoms archive ## A La Cornue stove not lighting, and twenty other things it does without explaining itself. On most makes the symptom pages are a way in and the code pages are the diagnosis. Here it is the other way round. La Cornue publishes three error codes in its entire US documentation and its Château guide has no troubleshooting section at all, so these twenty-one pages carry the whole diagnostic side of this site — and they are written for somebody standing in front of the range rather than for a search box. 21 — symptoms, each with its likely causes 3 — error codes in the whole make from $95 — diagnostic, credited to the repair ## What it is doing, and what that usually means Each page separates the design from the problem first, because a vaulted oven is uneven on purpose and an H on the hob display means the zone is still hot. No symptoms are published yet. ## Three codes, and no troubleshooting section at all The gas half of this line has no diagnostic system whatsoever: no display, no code, no stored history. The Château installation and user guide contains no troubleshooting section, and neither does the Tourelle guide. Only the induction electronics report anything, and they report exactly three things. So the observable behavior is the entire diagnostic path here, and a page that describes it properly is worth more than a code list would be. ## The same behavior means different things by configuration Every page here says what the symptom usually means on a gas Château, on a dual-fuel Château, on an all-induction Château, on a factory-built CornuFé and on the electric Tourelle — and says plainly where it does not apply at all. There is nothing to light on an induction top, no plaque on a CornuFé, and no gas anywhere near a Tourelle. That block exists on no sibling site because no sibling make is configured to order. ## Four checks that cost nothing The pan, on induction - A fridge magnet should grip the base firmly. Weak grip means weak coupling. - Minimum base diameters: 4¾ inches front left, 5½ at the rear zones, 8¼ in the center. - A smaller pan will not couple at all and nothing is broken. - The pan-missing symbol is the hob telling you this, not reporting a problem. The level, on any oven complaint - A dish of water on the middle shelf should sit at one depth all over. - Deeper at the back means the back needs raising or the front lowering. - It is the maker's own test and it explains a good share of uneven baking. - A range slid into place and never leveled is a real and common finding. The door seal - Close a strip of paper in the door and pull it out at eight or ten points around the perimeter. - Where it grips, the seal works. Where it slides out freely, it does not. - Loose along the top edge is usually the hinge or the catch; one corner is usually the seal. - On a vaulted oven the door is part of the cooking mass, so this shows up as a cooking complaint. What you cleaned recently - A splashed spark electrode can take a day to dry at eighty per cent humidity. - A burner head refitted slightly off its seat changes the flame immediately. - Never push wire or a pin into a burner port — an enlarged port is permanent. - This is the leading cause of burner calls in this city, and it fixes itself. ## Which appliance is doing it If you would rather start from the appliance than from the behavior. ## A gas smell, and a cracked hob If you can smell gas: turn the range off at its shut-off valve if it is safe to reach, open windows, do not operate switches or the hood, and call the utility or 911 before you call us. If the ceramic hob is cracked: disconnect the cooker from the power supply immediately and do not use it until it has been repaired — that is the maker’s own instruction, not our caution, and the glass is what separates the coils from anything spilled on the surface. ## Questions we are asked about symptoms My oven cooks unevenly. Is that a problem or is that the oven? — Some of it is the design, and the maker says so in its own cooking notes: a vaulted oven cooks by radiant heat from a heavy sealed cavity, the strongest zone is not the geometric center, and you are expected to turn a large item during cooking and leave space between two loaded shelves. What is not designed in is a repeatable pattern — consistently pale on one half, or behavior that changed in a fortnight. Do the water test and the paper test first; they are free and they explain most of these. Why is there no error code for my problem? — Because on this make there almost certainly is not one. Three codes exist in the whole of La Cornue's US documentation — E2, U400 and Er with a number — and all three are on the induction hob. The Château guide has no troubleshooting section at all. A site that invented codes to fill that gap would be doing what a sibling network did for another brand, which was to publish about 38 codes that were really symptoms. Can I keep using the range while I wait? — It depends which page you are on, and each one says. A single dead burner: yes, use another. A burner that lights and dies: not that one. A gas oven that will not light: stop trying and shut the range off at its valve, because a sealed vaulted cavity is not somewhere to leave unburnt gas. A cracked induction hob: no, and isolate it at the breaker. A hood that rumbles: yes, but book it, because a rumbling blower ends in a seized one. Nothing here matches what mine is doing. — Then say exactly that when you book and describe it in your own words. Twenty-one pages cover what we are actually called to; they are not a claim to have anticipated everything a hand-built appliance can do after twenty years in a coastal kitchen. The diagnostic is the same either way, and on this make it is measurement rather than matching a symptom to a list. ## Why symptom pages carry this whole site ### Because the maker publishes almost nothing Three error codes, all on the induction electronics, and no troubleshooting section in the guide for the ranges most of this catalog consists of. There is no display on a gas Château, nothing stored, and no history to read out. So the observable behavior is the diagnostic path, and the instruments do the rest: gas pressure at the manifold, igniter current measured in amps rather than judged by brightness, millivolts across the flame supervision, actual shelf temperature against the dial through a full cycle. ### And because the search demand agrees Of 527 relevant phrases people type about this make, not one contains the word error and not one contains the word code. One contains igniter. What the demand is full of instead is price, comparison and use — is it worth it, how do I use the oven, what do the symbols mean, La Cornue versus Wolf. Nobody troubleshoots this make in a search box, which is exactly why these pages are written for the person standing in the kitchen. ### What we ask for The model code, the top configuration if the paperwork survives, which burner or which oven door, and whether anything changed in the kitchen recently. With those four we can usually name the likely part and the band it falls in before anybody leaves the house. ## Tell us what it is doing, in your own words. Plus the model code and which burner or which oven door. On a make with nothing to read, that description is genuinely the diagnosis starting. --- **[Read full article: Symptoms archive](https://la-cornuemiami.support/symptoms-archive/)**