Continued from December Newsletter - page 1

Most cooking was not done over a roaring fire but over hot piles of coals placed all over the brick hearth.  Pots were placed on trivets that straddled the hot coals and, generally, meals required as many as a half dozen coal piles. Kettles were hung from a crane or trammel at different heights to keep the food warm, and water boiling. Meat could be cooked in a broiler or on skewers set in front of the main log and turned by a ratchet and weight device.

Trammels were an alternative to cranes and hung from an iron rod traversing the fireplace, or on the crane. We've seen a number of different trammel designs - blacksmiths were creative! - and occasionally you can purchase one on eBay if a local salvage yard hasn't any for sale.

Baking was an all day job. Early in the morning a fire was started on the floor of the bread oven (The flue is in front of the oven door) which would burn for several hours until the bricks were white hot. The fire was pulled from the oven, with live coals placed in the fireplace or on the hearth and ashes in a compartment below the oven.

As bread needed the highest temperature to bake, bread loaves went in first followed by pies, cakes and cookies.  Finally, the oven was used to dry vegetables and fruit. 

But the cooking style we find most intriguing is stringing the turkey in front of the fire and letting it cook.  We've read that string roasting is a very old form of cooking and that the French still roast a leg of lamb this way - gigot a la ficelle!  Now here's an idea for your Christmas entrée! 

Sturbridge sells a string roasting kit called "Chicken on a String." It 's available for approximately $20. The phone number of the store is (508) 347-0270. Their e-mail address is: osvgifts@osv.org

And finally, what would cooking be without cook books?  Yes, there were cookbooks way back then - and you can still purchase some of the hot bestsellers of the day on Amazon.com.  Here are two that might make wonderful presents for the industrious cook who happens to have a working brick fireplace and bread oven:

Hannah Glasse's “Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy; Excelling any Thing of the Kind as yet Published”.

Her cookbook was first published in 1747, and was one of the most popular cookbooks for the American housewife of the late 1700’s. In her own words: 

“I Believe I have attempted a branch of Cookery which nobody has yet thought worth their while to write upon: but as I have both seen, and found by experience, that the generality of Servants are greatly wanting in that point, I heretofore have taken upon me to instruct them in the best manner I am capable ; and, I dare say, that every Servant who can but read, will be capable of making a tolerable good Cook; and those who have the least notion of Cookery, cannot miss of being very good ones.”

And there is Elizabeth Raffald’s “The Experienced English Housewife”, a blending of household manual and cookbook. It was first published about 1782. It, too, is available on Amazon.com.