Food Preparation of the 18th Century
THE KITCHEN AND PANTRY
Explore Woodville’s Kitchen and Pantry
1808/1809 a log addition was built on the northwest side of the 1785/1786 log kitchen. It appears that throughout much of Woodville's more than 200 years of private ownership, the log house and its adjoining pantry area continued to serve the same purposes-cooking and various food preparation and storage functions. The log floor joist that provided the basis for the dendrochronology dating of the log pantry to 1808/1809 is preserved for visitors to see beneath a thick glass covering in the pantry floor.
A single door connects the pantry to the log kitchen. These two rooms surely were the nerve center of nearly every day at Woodville for many decades, the place where the daily meals were prepared and cooked. Before it was restored, the interior kitchen wall had been covered with knotty pine paneling, and a newer floor had been laid down. The current floor is a 2009 replacement.
When the pine paneling and some exterior clapboards were removed during restoration, a large opening in the log walls beneath the paneling was exposed in the south wall of the kitchen. This discovery revealed that before the current fireplace was constructed in the mid-1820 , it had been located on the opposite wall of the log building, possibly to reduce the risk of fire spreading to the frame portion of the house. When the kitchen was joined to the frame house and the new kitchen fireplace and chimney stack were built, the old fireplace was abandoned and the opening enclosed. The visitor will note the enormous wooden mantle over the current fireplace as well as the variety of cooking implements that have been collected and displayed in the restoration of this room. Eighteenth-century cooking demonstrations now form an important part of the NHA's interpretive and educational program.
1800
Cast Iron Cookware
In the 18th century, iron cookware primarily consisted of cast iron pots and pans, often featuring simple designs with short, "rat tail" handles, and were typically used on open hearths; common items included cooking pots, kettles, fry pans (sometimes called "spiders"), and posnets (small, bowl-like pots with legs and a long handle), all made through the sand casting method which became widely available during this period thanks to Abraham Darby's patent.
Founded in 1865 as the Seldon and Griswold Manufacturing Company, the Griswold company became known as the premier manufacturer of high-quality cast-iron kitchen items in the United States. The Griswold cast iron foundry was based in Erie, Pennsylvania; and until the early 1900s, cast-iron items from this company were marked with an "ERIE" logo. In the early 1900s, this was changed to a "GRISWOLD" logo, and it is this logo that is most commonly associated with Griswold cast-iron cookware.
1800
American Pine Cupboard
An 18th century American pine cupboard was a common piece of furniture in colonial American homes, primarily constructed from readily available white pine wood, often featuring simple designs influenced by English styles but adapted to the practical needs of the New World, with cabinetmakers utilizing the wood's affordability and abundance to create functional storage units for everyday household items; this style is particularly associated with the Queen Anne and Chippendale periods, showcasing clean lines and restrained ornamentation, reflecting the shift towards a more classical aesthetic in American furniture design.
1786
Attached Log Kitchen
The dendrochronology study also confirmed that the now clapboard-encased singleroom log kitchen attached to the frame house is actually younger in age – a revelation to many who assume that a log building must be older than a frame one. However, analysis of multiple dendrochronology cores taken from the logs in the kitchen all yielded a date of 1785 for the felling of the trees from which it is constructed and a likely construction date of the kitchen in 1786. This building probably was erected first as a separate kitchen that stood next to the frame house, either with or without clapboards placed over the logs. It is conceivable that the log kitchen was built to prepare Woodville for the wedding of Abraham Kirkpatrick and Mary Ann Oldham on November 23, 1786.
1800
Chocolate Stone
In the 18th century, chocolate was typically ground on a heated stone, often referred to as a "chocolate stone," where cocoa beans were manually crushed and ground into a paste, a process that was labor-intensive and primarily done by hand, particularly in colonial America, where enslaved cooks would grind the beans on a heated stone to create chocolate drinks; this method was a continuation of the traditional Mesoamerican practice of using a "metate" (a flat stone) to grind cocoa beans.
