How food was cooked

There were many people to cook for and generally more effort was involved than today.  A great deal of kitchen equipment was used and the kitchen contains an extensive range of saucepans, jam pans, casserole dishes, fish kettles, jelly moulds etc.  Almost all of these are made from copper which was preferred because of its superior conductivity.  Copper is very attractive but requires careful treatment; at Bowhill the pans were kept clean with a mixture of either lemon juice and salt or vinegar and white sand but the results do not last and they needed to be cleaned every day.  Nowadays more modern methods are used.

The tableware – dinner services, serving vessels, glasses and cutlery – were kept elsewhere and only the serving vessels were brought into the kitchen to be filled.  These can be seen in the House, not in the kitchen.

Kitchen staff worked a long day with many tasks being more lengthy and laborious than today and many cooking operations taking much longer.  Cooking took three main forms – roasting, baking and boiling or steaming.  One end of the kitchen is entirely given over to these forms of cooking based on coal and/or wood as the fuel.  Centrally positioned is an open fire place above which is part of the spit mechanism for roasting meat.  Unfortunately it has so far proved impossible to restore the spit to working order.  A pan beneath caught the juices and these were used to baste the meat during cooking.  To the left of the fire is a series of ovens of different sizes and shapes whose temperature could be controlled to a certain extent to cope with the requirements of different dishes for baking.  To the right is an open fire which would be used for heating kettles and pans of hot water and also a variety of irons.  This would also be where the girdle was hung for making scones and pancakes.