colonial cooking

Colonial Cooking

By Katie Walsh 7C2 ID3

The Kitchen

If you lived in a colonial house, the center of many things were done in the room; such as cooking, of course, and most of the family members spent their time in there because of the warmth radiating from the fireplace.

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The Colonial Fireplace

In a colonial kitchen, the brick oven was by far the largest thing in the room. It was used for cooking! Notice the small opening in the wall to the left of the fireplace. That was where the colonists actually made food. The food would get burned if it was put right in the fireplace above the fire, so they put it in the compartment so it would get heat, but not the direct fire or smoke. Another use for the fireplace was to keep the house warm.



Tools Used for Cooking

These are a few of many tools used in a colonial kitchen:

Quern A quern is a tool that is used to pound grain in to flour.

Fire Spoon A fire spoon, very similar to a fireplace shovel, is a long handled tool used to carry hot coals from place to place. For example, with a fire spoon, you could easily carry hot coals from the fireplace to start an oven.





Peel Tool used to take bread out of the oven.

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Women’s Jobs in the Kitchen

The women played an extremely important role in cooking. They would prepare the meals for the family. Cooking would start each day before dawn in a colonial house. The woman would bring in fresh water, milk the cow, pick fresh vegetables, collect eggs, and hang meat to dry. In the house, breakfast would not be served until every other member had finished their daily chores.



Men’s Jobsin a ColonialKitchen

Men also had rather important jobs in a colonial kitchen. They provided the food women used in preparing meals by hunting and trapping animals and fish, and sowing the fields at the beginning of planting season.



Meals

BREAKFAST Breakfast time in a colonial household is far different from the juice, eggs, and bacon we are all used to. Before the members of the family would eat, they’d have to do chores. Afterwards, the family members would drink cider or beer and eat porridge which was slowly cooking over the embers overnight. Another popular morning meal was cornmeal mush with molasses.

DINNER During dinner, members of the family usually started off one of two courses of the meal with several kinds of meats, plus meat puddings and/or deep meat pies containing fruits and spices, pancakes and fritters, side dishes of sauces, pickles, and soups. Desserts seemed to arrive in the second course, including pies, cobblers, custards, cakes such as pound, gingerbread, cheese, or spice, etc.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcolonial.html#colonialmealtimes

http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcandy.html#earlyamericancandy

http://www.ssdsbergen.org/Colonial/food.htm

http://www.ehow.com/about_4567543_colonial-kitchens.html

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/forestoakms/site%20pages/academics/social%20studies/colonisl%20times/baker.html

colonial cooking

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