The Miniature Kitchen...
Cookery Page...
Welcome to our cookery page, which will bring a selection of miniature culinary delights for your enjoyment. We may occasionally include some actual recipes so you can try them yourself in real life. Interesting snippets of food history and traditions will also be included in these pages, along with differing tastes in foods through the ages and their raw ingredients.
Mags Cassidy of Mags~nificent Miniatures
Cottage kitchens - food preservation and storage...
Up until the end of the 19th and even into the 20th century life in cottages did not change much for hundreds of years. Food preservation and storage was essential to get through the winter months and a constant battle was raged against rodents, insects and other pests, without the actual problems of keeping food edible.
Preserving methods consisted of salting (usually for meat and fish), smoking (where the food was often hung from a hook inside the chimney to cure, again for meat and fish), pickling (where vegetables were preserved in either brine (salt water) or vinegar. Some foods such as fruit were dried or made into jams, chutneys and curds. Dairy products such as hard cheeses were sealed in cloths and eggs were hard boiled and pickled. Some meats and seafood could be placed in small bowls and sealed with butter to the depth of about ½-inch/1 cm; today potted shrimps are seen as a luxury food item! Some food items, such as meat were also preserved in melted lard (leading to the word larder). Nuts such as walnuts were pickled green and others picked and stored in outbuildings along with trays of fruit (apples, pears) and sacks of vegetables (such as potatoes), onions were stung up in plaits and hung from ceilings, carrots and other root vegetables were buried in sandy soil in wooden boxes. Peas and beans were dried and stored in sacks until needed. Herbs were dried and hung in bunches from beams in the ceiling, or stored in pots.
Food was kept in a larder (or pantry), which was usually north facing, well ventilated and with a stone or slate shelf on which to place dishes and bowls of food (carefully covered with crochet or muslin cloths). Other shelves would be in the larder for jams, jellies and chutneys. Large crocks of items preserved in vinegar or brine would be kept on the floor (again well covered). Often a meat safe would be found in the larder to hold any fresh or preserved meat (smoked meat was generally hung from hooks in the ceiling). This could be wooden with a mesh door to keep flies and rodents out or a muslin bag with wire rings inside it suspended from the ceiling in the hope rats and mice did not eat the contents.
Game-birds and rabbits would often be strung up in the outside privy to ‘hang’ (make the meat tender) and to keep the flies away as the smell of ammonia from stale urine was thought to deter flies.
"next time you moan about preservatives in food think of the poor Victorians!..."
Sacks of flour and dried goods would often be infested with weevils and other insects, but these were not considered harmful and the products (with additions!) were still used. Biscuits were tapped hard on the table to remove any weevils before eating. Mousetraps would be scattered around the kitchen and would be emptied daily.
Flies were a major nuisance in summer and often food would contain maggots where the flies had managed to get through any protective covers. Wasp traps (often a simple jam jar filled with water and a bit of jam left outside the door) were a necessity in summer. Later in the 19th century flypapers could be purchased (sticky strips of paper, that hung from ceilings to catch the flies and wasps)
Until the end of the 19th Century there was no such thing as canned or bottled food, and most people did not own a fridge until well into the 1940’s. Most food had to be bought in fresh each day, especially if the cottage owner did not have livestock or a small vegetable patch. Also by the start of the 19th century most people no longer baked their own bread, many bread ovens in cooking ranges had been blocked up, so bread too had to be bought in daily.
Just as a note of interest many preservatives used by the Victorians were highly poisonous substances such as strychnine used to preserve rum and beer, and lead in cider. Not to mention other items added to preserving solutions for pickles, such as copper sulphate and of course red lead that used to be used to give colour to cheese! So next time you moan about preservatives in food think of the poor Victorians!
If you are furnishing a pre 20th century dolls house therefore, don’t forget to put a larder in near the kitchen, or a small lean to outhouse and don’t forget the mousetraps!
Photos courtesy of Mags-nificent Miniatures Copyright 1998-2008
AIM Copyright 2008
