Thistle Dew Books

19^th Century Kitchen Utensils and Their Uses ©

Victoria Rumble

How well stocked the 19^th century kitchen was depended on several factors – the skill of the cook, the income of the family, the distance particular goods had to be shipped, the skill of the local blacksmith or wood carver, and even the type of food the family was familiar with.

As one whose interests and career revolve around period foods and their duplication, I have found that some vessels and utensils are indispensable in preparing period dishes while others might be purchased more for expanding a collection than for any real necessity in cooking.

Let’s examine a few of the popular items of the era, but first let’s look at an 1861 list of items suggested for a middle class kitchen. The number of utensils grew to include a plethora of single-use gadgets by the end of the 19^th century.

Tea-kettle, toasting-fork, bread-grater, pair of brass candlesticks, teapot and tray, bottle-jack, spoons (6), candlesticks, candle-box, knives and forks (6), 2 sets of skewers, meat-chopper, cinder-sifter, coffee-pot, colander, block-tin saucepans (3), Iron saucepans (5), Iron steamer, large boiling pot, iron stew-pans (4), dripping pan and stand, dustpan, fish and egg-slice, 2 fish-kettles, flour-box, flat-irons, frying pans (2), gridiron, mustard-pot, salt-cellar, pepper-box, bellows, jelly-moulds (gelatin), plate-basket, cheese-toaster, coal-shovel, and wooden meat-screen.

Bain-Marie: A large vessel filled with hot water into which other vessels (saucepans, kettles, moulds, etc.) were set to prepare food or keep it warm until it was served (gravies, sauces, soups, etc.). This could be accomplished by setting a saucepan into a larger saucepan containing hot water when a bain-marie was not available. It is the same concept as a double boiler.

Baker: Tin bakers, sometimes called tin kitchens or reflector ovens were “boxes” outfitted with iron hooks to which meat or grates could be attached. It was used to bake bread, cakes, apples, and could also be used to cook meat.

Cake pans: Cake pans came in a variety of shapes and sizes, including fluted varieties. They were usually made of tin.

Cellar, salt: Salt cellars held salt for individual use at table before the common use of shakers. They were made from a variety of materials and sometimes had small spoons which could be used rather than pinching amounts between the fingers. Salt cellars date from the 5^th century, however, through the Medieval era they were of massive design compared to the smaller versions of the 19^th century.

Choppers: Chopping blades with handles were still in use though by the mid-19^th century many were made of thinner materials which made the task easier than the heavier versions from the previous century. They came with one blade or two, and opinion varied as to which was best. They were often used in specially designed bowls which were long and narrow or round to accommodate the shape of the blade.

Coffee grinder: Before the institution of modern packaging methods coffee beans were purchased in their green state, roasted and ground at home. The most common variety was made of wood with a cast-iron grinding gear. Other types of grinders included the sausage grinder which was made of metal and operated by way of a crank handle.

Colander: A bowl with holes in it used to drain food – from boiled foods to salad greens. Hole size varied, as did the material they were made from.

Creased-paddles or hands: Wooden ridged paddles for shaping butter, not to be confused with a butter mold into which butter was packed to shape it into a large block.

Cutters: Usually made of tin and in varying sizes and shapes, and designed to cut biscuits, small cakes (cookies), and doughnuts. There were also tin cutters designed to cut whimsical designs from slices of vegetables to garnish clear soups or consommé.

Digester: This was the fore-runner of the pressure cooker. It made short work of extracting flavor from bones for stock, accomplishing in one to two hours what had previously taken six to eight with slow simmering.

Dish-covers: Wire devices designed to keep flies and other insects away from food that had been put onto serving dishes.

Dredger: A utensil used for sprinkling flour – either onto meat as it roasted or into greased baking pans to prevent batter from sticking. Most dredgers looked like large salt shakers with handles.

Egg-beater: By the 19^th century hand-beaters made of tin wire had, for the most part, replaced the wooden twigs of the previous century for whisking eggs and batters. The beaters were usually made by tin-smiths and were important in making cakes in which the egg-whites were stiffly beaten and folded into the batter to get extra volume in the cake.

Fruit-corer: A funnel shaped device of tin used to core fruit of any size – from cherries to pineapple. Multiple sizes came as a set.

Frying pans: The spider variety which had three legs designed to sit over hot coals began to give way to the flat bottomed varieties as the cook stove became more popular.

Granite-ware: Post Civil-War era. The enamel surface was easily chipped like the enamel surface sometimes applied to cast-iron pans and kettles. One of the earliest accounts of enamel-ware was Miss Parloa who wrote of the use of granite ware for “eight years” in 1887, putting its earliest use at about 1879. Newspapers carried multiple advertisements for it in the 1890’s.

Grater: These could be purchased or made at home by driving nails into metal producing the raised surface on which nutmegs or other substances such as bread could be reduced to pieces or powder.

Griddle: Used for making griddle cakes, bread, etc. There were cast-iron types and those made of soapstone, though the latter weren’t nearly as durable.

Gridiron: A slatted grate on legs for roasting flesh and fish over hot coals. These sometimes rotated in order to turn the meat without touching the hot surface.

Jacks and spits: Roasting jacks were devices used to turn meat as it roasted before the fire. They varied from the elaborate system of pulleys and ropes of the Medieval era, sometimes turned by specially trained dogs in tread-wheels, to the 19^th century bottle jack, though in the mid-19^th century smoke-jacks and wind-up jacks were still listed in cookery books. This device was so named because of its shape – a small round tube at top attached to a larger round base which had an opening whereby the mechanism could be wound with a key. When hung and wound it kept the meat continuously turning before the heat so that it cooked evenly and had a beautifully browned surface. There were hooks hanging from the bottom of the device onto which the meat was hung, and a hanging loop at the top from which the device was hung from the ceiling or mantle. As it cooked the roaster with attached meat was moved farther away from the hot coals so as not to over-cook the outside. As the meat roasted and fat dripped away it was caught in dripping-pans, so that the fat could be re-used, and so that the fat didn’t produce flames on the coals underneath burning the meat. This process is difficult today when most fat has been removed from meat before it is purchased.

Bottle-jack and dripping-pan with basting ladle

Jam-pot: A vessel for holding fruit jams and jellies. Perhaps more of a dish than a utensil, but so commonly used as to need no definition.

Jelly-Bag: A bag used to drain juice from fruit. It was often of white flannel about 20 in. long by 12 – l5 in. across, wider at the top and tapering, usually to a point at the bottom. With tape ties at the tip it could be attached to sticks or skewers and suspended over a container.

Kettles: A wide vessel, usually of cast-iron for boiling. Kettles had various uses.

(Left to right fish kettle with removable rack, two types of preserving kettles, 1858)

Knives: Knives varied from butcher knives to paring knives, and scalloped versions designed to cut vegetables into decorative shapes to be served alone or used as garnish for prepared dishes. These differed from serrated bread knives in that the scallops didn’t extend the full length of the blade. Meat saws and cleavers might be included in this category.

Larding-needle: In larding thin strips of fat (salt pork) about 2 ½ in. long were placed in the needle which was then run through a joint of meat coming out the other side while leaving the fat imbedded in the meat. This allowed for beautiful browning and put moisture into meat which might otherwise have emerged dry and tough with roasting. Larding was also a popular method of preparing game birds. Needles are quite long, pointed on one end, and open to hold the strips of fat on the other. If the salt pork strips didn’t imbed in the meat it meant the strips were too large, and if the strips broke during the process it meant the fat was of inferior quality.

Lemon-squeezer: Came in a variety of shapes, used to extract juice from lemons.

Meat mallet: Wooden mallets with “checks” carved into its surface so that it produced points with which to pound tough cuts of meat. One description fixed a measurement at six inches square with a handle.

Mortar and pestle: Used to grind spices and other substances. Spices were usually ground or crushed at home when ready for use.

Moulds: Moulds were used for making jellies (gelatin) and ice-cream, and for molding puddings, and meat or game pies, though the latter was perhaps more common in Europe than parts of the U.S. The latter moulds were decorative in shape, hinged, with a pin to hold the two halves closed during the cooking process. The former were one-piece, and came in any variety of shapes. Plum pudding moulds looked like small tin buckets with lids – they were usually about 5 to 7 in. tall by 5 to 6 in. across, with a tube in the middle to make the pudding come out hollow in the center like a modern bundt cake.

Napkins: In addition to their most obvious use napkins were often used to strain stock and broth to remove impurities. They were made of cloth and much larger than most found today.

Pans: Pans were made of earthenware, cast-iron, block tin, copper, and brass. Each had its advantages and disadvantages and it was the cook’s choice which suited her needs best. Copper was cheapest, but Americans often did not like them because they required more care due to the inside being lined with tin. Unlined copper resulted in the food assuming an unwanted flavor, and posed a threat of Verdi gris poisoning. Pans could be purchased by the 1850’s lined in porcelain or tin – much like La Cruset cookware of today. This prevented the food from assuming any untoward flavor or color from the pan, but the porcelain could crack allowing food and bacteria to lodge between the porcelain and the metal. Boiling pots were usually short in comparison to their diameter with short attached handles.

Pepper-box: A small box with perforated top to dispense ground peppercorns – either white or black. (In use by the 1850’s)

Pipkin: A small earthen boiler (still in use by some in the 1860’s).

Potato masher: The wooden beetle type began to give way to metal styles after the mid 19^th century though many women continued to use the wooden type.

Presses: Some were wooden, some were metal, and they were designed for a multitude of uses from pressing pieces of meat into a solid form to pressing the remaining whey from cheese.

Pudding cloth: A cloth, or shaped cloth bag in which ingredients were placed, then lowered into a kettle of simmering water or broth to produce a boiled pudding. These included both savory and sweet versions.

Salamander: A round flat piece of iron attached to a handle to be held over heat until red-hot then passed over the surface of food to brown it. Those who did not own a salamander sometimes did the same using a fire shovel in the method described by LaVarenne.

Scales: Most kitchens had scales because baking ingredients were often measured in pounds and ounces rather than cups. These were large devices with a tray to hold the ingredients being weighed on one end and a set of counter-weights to be placed on the other end.

Skewers: Skewers were commonly used to hold meat for roasting or to fasten pieces or edges of meat together. They were either decorative at the handle or plain and utilitarian, and could be purchased or made by a blacksmith. Kitchens often contained these in varied sizes.

Skimmer: A scoop-shaped utensil (wooden or metal) used for skimming liquors – this could refer to skimming scum (impurities) that rose while making stock, or skimming cream from milk.

Soap-shaker: Small bits of soap were put into this wire basket with a handle so that they might be used in dish-washing or for other purposes so as not to waste them. It also kept the soap from coming in direct contact with the dishes and leaving soap streaks.

Spice boxes: These were metal boxes which contained small airtight tins for holding spices. Cork and paper did not keep out the air and allowed the spices to go stale in an incredibly short period of time, especially if ground. Spice boxes ranged from plain tin to decorated varieties.

Spoons: Wooden spoons were recommended for use in stirring dishes, at least partially to prevent scratching the interiors of the pans. Vegetable spoons looked like melon-ballers and were designed to cut potatoes, carrots, and turnips into ovals, rounds, or decorative shapes.

Strainers and sieves: Strainers differed from colanders in that they were of a finer mesh and used to remove lumps, pieces of bone, or other impurities from sauces or soups. Sieves were for removing lumps and impurities from dry ingredients such as flour or sugar. Such ingredients often contained impurities designed to stretch the quantity of the good, and varied in the degree of harm they caused to the foods and to those who ate the

food. A tamis was a cloth device used to strain sauces.

Trivets: Trivets were made of metal, usually cast-iron, and were used to set flat-bottom pans, such as saucepans, on over hot coals to keep the food from being burned through direct contact with the heat. These were of various shapes, and the legs varied in height.

Waffle-iron: These consisted of two hinged pieces of cast-iron with a ball at the back which could be rotated inside a cup attached to the base ring for flipping from one side to the other over the hot coals. The base rings varied in height – the higher the ring, generally the older the iron as it was used at the hearth instead of over a cook stove. Hot coals were placed inside these base rings which provided the cooking heat.

By 1900 the list of kitchen utensils found in an average home had swollen drastically as Victorians desperate to elevate their station in life through the ostentatious display of goods they owned collected every gadget to come down the pike.

The following advertisement was published in 1901for a 100-piece “kitchen outfit” that cost $12.98. Note that enamel-ware pieces have now, in some pieces, replaced some of the tin-ware from the 1860’s. Laundry items are included in the kitchen utensils.

1 2-qt. gray enamel coffee pot, 1 2-qt. gray enamel saucepan, 1 2-qt. gray enamel milk pan, 1 2 1/2 –qt. gray enamel Saucepan, 1 4-qt. gray enamel saucepan, 1 2-qt gray enamel milk pan, 1 2-qt. gray enamel pudding pan, 1 10-qt. heavy tin dish pan, 1 2-qt. heavy tin saucepan, 1 3[qt. heavy tin saucepan, 1 3-in. heavy tin basin, 1 3-qt. heavy tin bucket, 1 6-cups heavy tin muffin pan, 1 1-qt. heavy tin dipper, 2 heavy tin pie plates, 1 heavy tin soup strainer, 1 heavy tin gravy strainer, 1 heavy tin flour sieve, 2 heavy tin bread pans, 1 heavy tin colander, 1 heavy tin wash boiler, 1 heavy tin grater, 1 heavy tin nutmeg grater, 1 1-qt. heavy tin measure, 1 10x14 in. iron roast pan, 1 9x11 in. steel fry pan, 1 12in. basting spoon, 3 retinned tea spoons, 3 retinned tablespoons, 1 retinned soup ladle, 1 wire skimmer, 1 wire tea strainer, 1 wire egg-beater, 1 wire broiler, 1 wire soap dish, 1 wire toaster, 1 wire potato masher, 3 pair steel knives and forks, 1 steel bread knife, 1 steel carving knife, 1 steel carving fork, 1 steel chopping knife, 1 steel ice pick, 1 japanned bread box, 1 japanned spice box, 1 japanned coal hod, 1 japanned coal shovel, 1 japanned 14-in. tray, 1 japanned coffee canister, 1 japanned tea canister, 1 japanned sugar box, 1 japanned flour box, 1 japanned sugar dredge, 1 japanned pepper dredge, 1 japanned dust pan, 1 5-lb. sad iron, 1 7-lb. sad iron, 1 family wash board, 1 round bread board, 1 square pastry board, 1 4-ft. ironing board, 1 12-qt. fibre water bucket, 1 maple chopping bowl, 1 13-in. wood spoon, 1 salt box, 1 lemon squeezer, 1 towel roller, 1 coffee mill, 1 rolling pin, 1 cake turner, 1 yellow mixing bowl, 3 white china dinner plates, 3 white china soup plates, 3 white china cups and saucers, 3 water tumblers, 1 dust brush, 1 stove brush, 1 scrub brush, 1 hand brush, 1 floor broom, 1 whisk broom, 1 sink broom, 1 laundry basket.

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