Kitchens of yesteryear

Kitchenware
From Medieval times, wood has been used in the home: imagine a wooden table laden with wooden plates, spoons and goblets, each with a different patina. Today, these items are referred to as treen. In the kitchen, butter pats, serving utensils, bowls and cake moulds were all made from wood. Horn was also used for spoons and drinking vessels, or beakers. Metal found its way into the mix with forks, and items that went in the fire, such as pots, trivets and spits. Families with little money had to make do with what they could, but even the poorest could generally afford a few wooden items, some of which were kept for special occasions, rather than used every day. Only the very wealthy used silver and porcelain. As the North American ceramics industry grew in the 19th century, so did the availability and affordability of pottery. It was then that cake moulds and mixing bowls, as well as tablewares became commonplace in wealthier homes.

Cookbooks
In the 17th and 18th centuries, most middle-class girls learned how to cook by watching their mothers and older sisters. In small households, the wife or mother did the cooking, cleaning and running of the home, though properties such as large farms, where both workers and the family lived, could afford servants to help the farmer's wife. Family traditions, including recipes, may have been written into a household journal, or simply orally passed down from generation to generation. As the middle classes grew in the 18th century, so did the market for cookery books. At first, they were manuals for those running the households of wealthy families, going beyond the preparation of meals to detail the cleaning of silver, management of servants and budgetary concerns. It was in later years that the guides became more specialized toward recipes.

Food prep
People's meals consisted of the farm's produce, or items foraged from the wild. By necessity, the harvest had to last through the winter, making the preservation of foods (jellies, salting and drying meat and fish, bottling vegetables) an important skill. Europeans settling in North America would have tailored their recipes from ‘home' to the new foods they found: where a roast fowl was once used in England, a turkey may take its place overseas.