Cooking on the Hearth: No Microwave, No Stove Quiz

Answer: a horizontal bar affixed to the chimney wall, that held pots and swung away from the fire when wanted

A crane was a horizontal bar that reached from one chimney wall out over the fire. You could swing it into the room to safely hang or inspect a heavy pot, without ever needing to lean over the flames. In general, it made life much easier for the hearth-cook, and allowed her to use the heat of the flames while she was also making coals to cook on the hearth.

Answer: shoveled hot coals from the fire onto the stone of the hearth

The hot fire continually produced hot coals which fell below the logs on the andirons. You could reach in with a small flat shovel and pull out what you needed for the hearth. It was a bit of an art to judge when coals were cooling down and how many more fresh ones were needed, but watching the color darken helped. One couldn't take too many coals, or the main fire would cool down and go out, so one always wanted more coals available than you were actually planning to take.

Answer: trivets

Trivets, made of wrought iron with three legs, could hold pots 2" to 6" above the coals, depending on the size. They sat solidly even on an uneven stone hearth, and were open on top to let heat through. A cook needed at least one for every container being used, if it didn't have its own legs, so half a dozen trivets or more weren't unusual, allowing for things in frying pans, sauce pans, etc. One of the advantages of cooking on the hearth rather than a stove was you weren't limited to a certain number of burners or even the area of the hot stovetop. Everywhere you could squeeze some coals and a trivet on the hearth, you could add another pan.

Other useful items were hooks. They could be hooked together to lengthen or shorten the distance a kettle hung over the flames.

There were also interlocking hangers made for that, or a bit of chain could serve in a makeshift role.

Answer: tin kitchen or reflector oven

A reflector oven could be set on the hearth in front of the fire to capture the heat that would otherwise go into the room and be wasted. It could bake a pie on a rack, or other kinds of reflector ovens had hooks for baking or roasting meat, or a spit with a crank to turn it.

Answer: baking on the hearth

A bake kettle had several useful things unique to baking. One, it could have built-in feet to hold it above the coals, so no tripod was needed. Without these feet, a tripod could be added under it of course. Two, the lid had a lip around the upper edge which allowed hot coals to be shovelled on top.

This was unique among all the implements of hearth cooking, because it allowed heat to come down and form a browned crust on biscuits, a pie, bread, cake, and other things to be baked. A reflector oven, which reflected heat downward from its curved back, was the only other way to achieve it.

Answer: roasting meat directly on the crossbars

Some of the fanciest kinds of gridirons might have little grooves to drain off the fat as it was released in cooking, but most were just a set of narrow wrought iron bars set in the shape of a football gridiron, supported by four feet. Hot coals were placed under, the meat was placed on, and roasting was underway.

Modern cooks first given hearth cooking tools will often use the gridiron as something to set a pot on, but that's what all your trivets are for.

Answer: bell metal or enamel/graniteware

The first enamelware, porcelainware or graniteware pots were cast iron, coated on the inside with white enamel, designed to be used for preserves. They were showing up before the mid 19th Century. The Kentucky Housewife, 1839, said "The best preserving kettles are made of iron, and lined with porcelain." Another slightly earlier option was bell metal or brass, which also supposedly wasn't affected by acidity, if it didn't have too much copper.

Answer: a hanging griddle

A hanging griddle was flat and low-sided, like a frying pan, and would be the most straightforward solution. Rather than a handle extending from the side, it had a high bale so it could be hung from a crane over the direct flames of the fire. Both it and a large pot could be squeezed together on the crane, allowing yet more room for cooking.

Answer: look for a gate mark or sprue

A gate mark was produced by the cast iron process and generally indicates pre-1875, with usage fading between 1875 and 1900. It is a straight line, like a raised scar, on the bottom of the piece, several inches long. About a hundred years earlier, you would be looking for a sprue mark, a circular scar on the bottom caused by the casting methods of the 1700s. Original mid-1800s cast ironware is also noticeably lighter in weight than modern pieces, meaning a cook who was lifting, raising and moving cast iron all day had it a little easier than her current counterpart using modern containers.

Answer: lid lifter, skimmer, ladle, meat fork

A lid lifter was a hook with a wooden handle that helped you remove a hot cast iron lid. Long-handled instruments helped keep your hands away from the heat of the fire. A two-pronged fork would remove and hold a large cut of meat, a ladle would serve soups, while a perforated spoon would allow vegetables to be taken out of the water they had boiled in or any similar straining job.

There were endless other items to help, cutting boards, mixing bowls, tin pans that could fit down in cast iron, a pudding steamer or bag, skewers, rolling pin, various knives and cleavers...

The kitchen was like a workshop. Then there were fancy things like clock jacks to turn meat with wind-up machinery or even older and more strange setups for turnspit dogs to rotate the meat.