Kitchen midden

“ The window of the ground-floor was open, and through it could be seen a perfectly æsthetic kitchen—a kitchen after the heart of South Kensington, with a high-backed settle, a Cromwellian table and armchairs, all of the finest black oak, a dresser lined with willow-pattern plates of deepest blue, and a mantelshelf glorious with copper saucepans scoured to the grain. ”

“ There is a cavernous old kitchen within, resplendent in shining copper—a busy kitchen to-day, sizzling in good things and pungent with the aroma of two tender young chickens, basting on a spit, a jolly old kitchen, far more enticing than the dingy long dining-room adjoining it, whose walls are frescoed in panels representing bottle-green lobsters, gaping succulent clams, and ferocious crabs sidling away indignantly from nets held daintily by fine ladies and their gallants, in costumes that were in vogue before the revolution. ”

“ The kitchen itself is roomy and neat; the floor is of large, flat stones, the square embrasures of the windows are relieved with earthen pots of flowers. Full panoply of tins and trenchers and other implements of cheer hang in order against the walls or line the worn wooden shelves,—many of them strange in shape and of unconjectured use. ”

“ The kitchen was not the least attractive of these destinations,—with the ample fire in its spacious chimney-place, the shine of the pots and pans on its wall, the blackened beams across its low ceiling, its table devoted to culinary business, its greater table devoted to gastronomic business—for all guests of low station, including the servants of those of higher station, ate in the kitchen,—and the oaken settles and joint-stools so tempting to the tired, hungry, and thirsty traveller who might appear in the doorway. ”

“ I tore down my book rack and reading lamp from over the sink.
"Mr. Gilbert," he went on, "do not laugh at me when I tell you that I have evolved a whole kitchen philosophy of my own. I find the kitchen the shrine of our civilization, the focus of all that is comely in life. The ruddy shine of the stove is as beautiful as any sunset. A well-polished jug or spoon is as fair, as complete and beautiful, as any sonnet. The dish mop, properly rinsed and wrung and hung outside the back door to dry, is a whole sermon in itself. ”

“ Indoors there should be a cool little orderly dining-room, with blue china on its shelves, and a blue rug under the round table, and there should be a drawing-room papered in clean tans and curtained in cream colour, with an upright piano and comfortable chairs. The ugly old storeroom off the kitchen must be her mother's; it must have new windows cut, and nothing but what was new and pretty must go in there. And the kitchen should have blue-and-white linoleum, with curtains and shining tinware; there must be the gleam of scrubbed white woodwork, the shine of polished metal. ”

“ The kitchen, with its two box-beds hung with clean check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chimney-shelf four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. ”

“ I believe that nothing more was ever seen, but the kitchen at night, when all the family had retired, would at times become the seat of an appalling uproar of inarticulate voices and clashing dishes and dragging furniture. If any one was bold enough to venture down stairs, the noise would suddenly cease, and the kitchen itself never showed any trace of these unearthly revels, every plate, dish, cup and chair remaining in its accustomed place. ”

“ The low white kitchen is cut in two by a tall, semi-circular settle, to which the hostess returns, and with a round elm table between her and the fire she lops fine greens into a pail. A tenanted fireplace is better than a cold one on any day of the year, and it is cool in the window seat between the ale and the wind. ”

“ Who could grow fond of a white-tiled floor or a porcelain sink as they exist in so many modern kitchens! And as for the bulgy and top-heavy cook stoves, badly proportioned refrigerators, and kitchen cabinets—well, we should have to like cooking very well indeed before we could feel any pleasure in the mere presence of these necessary but unnecessarily ugly accompaniments to our work.
We have come to think of cleanliness as not only next to godliness, but as something which takes the place of beauty—is beauty. ”

“ The kitchen floor should be simply boarded; if only used to cook in, it should have merely one or two large squares of oilcloth or cocoa-nut matting by the stove, kitchen table, or where the cook and kitchen-maid stand to work, and the furniture should resolve itself into a couple of good tables, one the ordinary kitchen table, the other much on the same lines but smaller, and placed close to the window, to be used for pastry making and the finer parts of cooking, and which should both be scrubbed daily, and on which grease should never be allowed to remain for one minute. ”

“ The endless variety of new things which may be suggested for the kitchen is a veritable gold mine for the salesman who takes the opportunity to investigate the possibilities.
Many interesting and delightful things go into the modern kitchen which were unknown in those of 20 years ago. One sees a colorful pad for the work chair, a hanging bookshelf for cookbooks and accessories, an ornamental wall clock, colored prints, and plants. And of course in many a kitchen there is the breakfast nook, with its decorative furniture and its colored linen, glass, and china. ”

“ The kitchen is a great and worthy place. The long range with its lurid heat continually emits the fragrance of broiling fish, roasting mutton, joints, and fowl. The high black ceiling is ornamented with hams and flitches of bacon. There is a long, dark bench against one wall, and it is fronted by a dark table, handy for glasses of stout. ”

“ The kitchen is always in charge of the cook. In a small house, or in an apartment, she is alone and has all the cooking, cleaning of kitchen and larder, to do, the basement or kitchen bell to answer, and the servants' table to set and their dishes to wash as well as her kitchen utensils. In a bigger house, the kitchen-maid lights the kitchen fire, and does all cleaning of kitchen and pots and pans, answers the basement bell, sets the servants' table and washes the servants' table dishes. ”

“ Our kitchen is not that of a millionaire; it has not a tiled floor, enameled brick walls or glass shelves; it is not fitted with appliances for cooking by electricity or with automatic arrangements for bringing up coal and sending down ashes. It is a plain, ordinary kitchen, built new six years ago, and attached to an old house to take the place of the former basement kitchen. ”

“ I’m going to paint the woodwork white, and get some ball-bearing casters for it, and use it in the kitchen to work on. Then I can wheel it around where I need it, over by the sink when I’m washing dishes, over by the stove to hold the bowl of batter when I’m baking cakes.”
“Say, that’ll be great!” cried Louise. “Oh! I never [Pg 131] realized a kitchen could be pretty. Why, I’d like to wash dishes in a place like that—all white! Say, Nellie, is that a part of interior decorating? Kitchens?”
“Surely!” smiled the sister. “We want to make it pleasant where we have to work the most. ”

“ A French kitchen, with its white-washed walls, its shining range and rows upon rows of gleaming copper-ware, is an attractive subject for a painter; and there is no reason why an American kitchen, in a house distinguished for beauty in all its family and semi-public rooms, should not also be beautiful in the rooms devoted to service. We can if we will make much even in a decorative way of our enamelled and aluminum kitchen-ware ”

“ For the professional, scientifically inclined houseworker, the most beautiful kitchen may be the white porcelain one, with cold, snowy cleanliness suggesting sterilized utensils and carefully measured food calories.
But to the woman whose cooking and dishwashing are just more or less pleasant incidents in a pleasant round of home and social duties, the kitchen must suggest another kind of beauty—not necessarily a beauty which harbors germs, nor makes the work less conveniently done, but a beauty of kindly associations with furniture and arrangements. ”

“ Never allow a kitchen to be placed under the same roof as your dining-room or drawing-room: cut it off completely from the corps de logis, and let it only communicate by a passage;—so shall you avoid all chance of those anticipatory smells, the odour of which is sufficient to spoil your appetite for the best dressed dinner in the world. ”

“ The large kitchen, too, with its box seat, the meal chest with compartments for Indian meal, white meal and rye meal, the coffee grinder on the wall, the mantel with its row of two wicked brass lamps always clean and bright, the fireplace with its high andirons, and a four foot stick for a forestick, a crane with pothooks and a tin kitchen before the fire, has gone with the rest. ”

“ The principal room was the kitchen with its sanded floor, often laid herring-bone pattern. This was used as a dining-room and kitchen combined. Through the center of the house ran a chimney six feet square, around which clustered the closets, many of them secret. Here were concealed the family treasures, plate, and perchance a refugee. The family gathering place was the kitchen. It requires little imagination to repeople it with guests. Seemingly, we watch the elders seated on large, wooden settles inside the fireplace, roasting their faces, while they freeze their backs. ”

“ the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one’s mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks in the company of other good fellows; ”

“ But our kitchen, the pride of our house, will be level with the dining-room and front door. It is a foolish practice to have all vegetables, meat, coal, etc., taken downstairs for the purpose of bringing them all up again.
When it is impossible to spare two rooms on the ground floor for household use, let both kitchen and dining-room be upstairs, while the drawing-room might be on the ground floor. This would give no more work than does our present custom. But where it is possible, it is better, for obvious reasons, that the kitchen should be on a level with the street door. ”

“ The kitchen, aside from the elements of proportion in arrangement of its furnishings, is not properly a room for decoration. A cheerful color, plenty of light—a practical essential—and practical arrangement of its furniture and equipment are of more importance than the decorative element. Neatness, color harmony and a restful eye effect should be obtained. This applies as well to the butler’s pantry. Pantry and kitchen should always be shut off from the dining room, so that the latter’s decorative values are not affected by them. ”

“ It is equally unpleasant to sit in the room in which one has just dined, or to take meals in the room where they have just been cooked. With a little contrivance and ingenuity, the kitchen may be transformed into a neat little dining-room, a gas stove erected in any convenient recess or in the bathroom, and with paper-bag cookery, nothing more elaborate will be needed. ”

“ Directly beyon the well two girls may be seen in the act of preparing dinner which consists in arranging the dishes on little raised lacquer trays, which are to be carried in when dinner is ready. Near the range are little portable affairs made of soft stone used as braziers. The raised floor is composed of broad planks; kitchens invariably have wooden floors, which are oftentimes very smooth and polished.
The usual form of kitchen range is represented in fig. 168; this is made of broken tiles and mud or clay compacted together and neatly plastered and blackened on the outside. ”

“ A kitchen should always, if possible, be entirely above-ground, and well lighted. It should have a large sink, with a drain running under-ground, so that all the premises may be kept sweet and clean. If flowers and shrubs be cultivated around the doors and windows, and the yard near them be kept well turfed, it will add very much to their agreeable appearance. The344 walls should often be cleaned and whitewashed, to promote a neat look and pure air. The floor of a kitchen should be painted, or, which is better, covered with an oil-cloth. ”

“ The door opens under the low scullery roof, with the sink to your right hand as you go in, where the whole family takes turns at the papier-maché basin before tea. To the left of the scullery lies the kitchen. You go in as you go in at Stamway's: scrape your boots over a spade, knock both heels alternately against the outer wall, skate inwards over two mats, and give a twist sideways, watching the kitchen floor anxiously the while to see whether the mats have done their work or will betray you.
The kitchen takes up the whole end of the house, facing two ways. ”

“ And now to turn to the question of how to make the kitchen a little pleasanter than it is at present, especially in those houses where there is no servants’ hall. The best of cooks only succeeds in making her room look spotlessly clean and absolutely uninteresting ”