SC - Stoves and ovens

[Christine A Seelye-King]

 So, what we need is the earliest documentation any of us can find for 
!) pot au feu 2) cooking with stoves.  What do people have?
>Regards,
>Lady Allison

From"Old Cooking Utensils" by David J. Eveleigh, Shire Publications, UK

	"Boiling was the simplest and most widely practised method of
cooking.  Large boiling vessels, described variously as crocks,
cauldrons, kettles, boilers and furnaces constitute the most widely found
cooking utensils prior to 1800.  They were used at every social level but
amongst the poor especially were regularly employed to prepare an entire
meal.  Meat was placed in a pot of boiling water, followed later with
vegetables and a pudding which were wrapped in cloths and nets.  .....
 ...............Despite the variety of names, there were basically just
two types of boiling vessel; the *cauldron* and the *kettle*.  Both had a
long ancestry.  Metal cauldrons were first used in Britain about 1000 BC
during the late bronze age, and kettles originated in the Anglo-Saxon
*cytel*.  Cauldrons were round bellied and round bottomed, and by the
middle ages were being made with three legs which gave them stability and
enabled them to stand in the fire.  They were also provided with two
'ears' close to the rim by which they could be suspended over the hearth.
 Cauldrons were always made of cast metal, unlike kettles which were made
from sheet metal, usually brass, hammered by hand to form a straighter
sided, open-top vessel.  ......
	Most cauldrons recorded in sixteenth and seventeenth century
inventories were cast in a metal commonly described by contemporaries as
"crock brass" or "bell metal".  This was an alloy of copper and tin,
similar to bronze, although usually containing quantities of lead and
zinc.  There are few inventories that list cauldrons made of iron, but
these were rare.  Although cast iron was cheap it was of poor quality
until... 1709...
     ...........Stewing required a gentle even heat and for this a
separate brick stove burning charcoal was often used in preference to the
main kitchen grate until the developement in the nineteenth century of
kitchen ranges enclosed on top with a hot plate.  ...        
     ...........Originally ovens were associated exclusively with baking.
 From the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most substantial homes in
the countryside were built with a wall oven which generally consisted of
a circular domed cavity reached by a small rectangular opening; from
their shape they are sometimes described as 'beehive ovens'.  Faggots
were burned inside the oven to heat the masonry or brick lining, then the
embers were carefully spread around the floor to ensure it was heated
evenly before being raked out.  	  ...  In Cornwall, northern
England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland the three-legged cauldron was
inverted over the item to be baked and hot embers piled up around the
outside.  ...

Mistress Christianna MacGrain, OP, Meridies

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