Cooking and Chores
Our meals were hearty: breakfast at six o'clock: cracked
wheat or oatmeal cooked a long time . . . warmed over potatoes and
crisp salt pork or sausage with hominy, doughnuts and coffee . . . .
Dinner at noon; potatoes in some form, meat, vegetables and usually
pie for dessert. Father considered puddings "sissy stuff,"
but the rest of us liked them and sometimes he had to put up with
them.
Alice Laura
Stevenson
Daily cooking
activities were seldom recorded in diaries because it was such a common
activity. Baking was
regarded as a separate task and a separate measure of women's domestic
skill. Women often baked on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Baking
bread was a process that took many hours, from creating the dough to
cooling.
Yesterday Martha was making some corn muffins and asked me to
get her the baking powder. I got it and she put it in. Afterwards Ma
discovered I had given her [Martha] "Plaster of Paris" by
mistake. That's just my luck . . . It is needless to state that the
corn muffins did not rise.
Adeline Eliza
Graham
January 30, 1881
 Nineteenth-century
kitchen ranges were fueled by coal or wood, and were difficult to
master. Women had to know how intensely different woods burned,
especially for baking. Stoves were often accompanied by tall,
cylindrical hot water heaters. These kept water hot for cooking or
laundry so the family did not need to boil large quantities for those
tasks.
Both urban and
rural families raised livestock. Men usually arranged for or performed
the slaughtering of large stock, but women killed and dressed poultry
and did all the rest.
Canning and
preserving foods in season were also very important activities. Canned
("tinned") fruits and vegetables were available by the 1880s,
but were seldom considered as fresh and nice as from home, were more
expensive and often had a metallic taste. Drying fruit on racks heated
either by the sun or stove was a popular way to preserve it. You would
find pitting, paring and coring devices among the kitchen tools.
 Kitchens also
had mills and grinders for pulverizing dry goods and condiments. Pepper
and spice mills were often cylindrical, with a crank on top. Coffee
mills were wooden boxes with drawers and a grinder handle on top.
Hand-cranked meat grinders and mincing knives were used to process
meats. Wooden bowls were also used with the knives to chop meat.
Butter churns
came in two types: the up-and-down "dash" or plunger churn and
the rotary or circular crank churn popular after 1870. Butter spades
molded the finished product into bricks and molds, and stamps were used
to decorate and identify the butter "pats."
Monday was the
most common laundry day. Fabrics were sorted so as to wash delicate and
white fabrics first, calicos and gingham second and woolens last. The
process required two large wash tubs, one with warm soapy water and
another with warm clear rinse water. All materials except those too
delicate were rubbed on a washboard or agitated with a plunger.
Afterward, the clothes were wrung out by hand or in a wringer and hung
to dry. Ironing usually took place the following day. Two types of irons
were used, a coarse and a polishing version. The polishing iron was
rounded on both ends.
Cleaning
routines were continuous. They included sweeping the kitchen, dusting,
cleaning and filling lamps, washing dishes and making beds. Sweeping was
usually done twice weekly including Friday or Saturday in preparation
for the Sabbath. Carpet sweepers emerged in 1873 (made by Bissell Carpet
Sweeper Company, Grand Rapids), and proved to be very efficient. Their
design remained virtually unchanged for decades.
Evenings, my father makes things out of wood, hickory wood
that he has been seasoning for a year--axe helves, hoe handles, and
such. He makes shavings on the kitchen floor too, thin little yellow
curls from his place, tiny chips from his drawknife, and dusty
scrapings from the pieces of glass with which he smoothes the wood.
Sometimes my mother complains about the dirt.
Della
Thompson
Spring and fall
cleaning rituals were traditional events. With soot accumulated from oil
and gas lamps, dirt from road dust blowing in through the windows and
coal or wood heating for kitchen and parlor stoves, Victorian houses
often had much more dirt than modern ones. Spring cleaning took place
generally during the last two weeks of April. Tasks might include
painting; cleaning carpets; washing windows, walls, and floors;
organizing closets; packing away winter clothes; removing winter stoves;
and cleaning the furnace. Machines, gadgets, domestic servants,
hired-out labor, and children all eased women's workload somewhat in the
late 19th century, but they never eliminated it. Idleness was a vice,
and work of some sort was considered a virtue.
Went to School. Walked home with Trudie Beemer after school.
There was no one there so climbed in the kitchen window. Hence I made
my first call on Trudie through the kitchen window. She got ready then
we went picking May flowers up past the depot, westward.
Delevan
Brotherton
May 11, 1883
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