St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 3/Nature and Science/Cooking Customs

by Harry B. Bradford

Pueblo Cooking Pits.

Two of these have been sealed up to cook the food in them, and the woman is heating the third by stirring up the fire in it through the poke-hole. Her husband has just returned from the field with some corn, and has stopped to see how the fire is progressing.

Cooking Customs Past and Present

The earliest methods of cooking about which we know anything definite, as far as this country is

A fireplace in a Pueblo house of a later period.

The hood is held in place by ropes about a pole. In the foreground is shown a slab for baking cakes, with place for a fire under it. At the back a stone supports a pot holding it above the fire.

concerned, were carried on by the ancient [[Pueblo Indians|]] of New Mexico and Arizona.

Most of their cooking was done out-of-doors in pits dug in the ground, from eighteen to twenty-four inches deep. These were made in rows, or singly, with rims raised about eight inches above the ground. They were covered with stone slabs and sealed with mud during the cooking operation. A hot fire was first made in them, and, when the desired temperature was attained, all the fire and ashes were taken out, a large pot of corn-meal mush was put in, and the pit sealed for several hours, or until the mush was thoroughly cooked.

Later, when they built masonry houses, they had well-made chimneys and fireplaces. One of the illustrations shows a fireplace with a “hood” to carry away the smoke and the fumes from the cooking—a contrivance that few modern houses possess.

Corn was cultivated and acorns were gathered, this latter usually being done by the women, who also did the cooking. Meal was made from the corn or the acorns, and a batter prepared from this meal was baked in thin cakes on a stone slab directly under the fire hood. The temperature of this stone was kept right for cooking by adding brush to the fire beneath it, and as both ends were open, the draft was all that could be desired.

These ancient Indians were expert potters, and made vessels in which mush and meats were boiled. The pots were often supported by large stones which held the pot against the wall and above the fire.

Other and later Indian tribes of the far West cooked quite differently, or even, before kettles were to be had, ate some of their food raw. The Hupa Indians of northern California wove water-tight baskets in which they cooked acorn-meal mush by dropping several hot stones into the mixture of water and meal. They also baked on soapstone dishes over glowing wood fires. The Indians who could get fish used to cook them on a “spit” over a fire, or boil them with other food in baskets, as already described.

While many Indians were cooking their food out-of-doors, the Eskimos, who had little or no

A Hupa Indian of Northern California.

He is lifting the last of five very hot stones, which he will put into the basket where the others have made the mush boil. The stone is so hot it makes the sticks by which he is lifting it smoke and burn.

wood, were cooking theirs over soapstone lamps in their huts of ice, by boiling it in soapstone dishes hung from a grating at the top of the room, though much of their meat and fish was eaten raw. All of these people ate practically one daily meal—at evening—so very little cooking was required. Later, when driftwood could be had, large fires were made outside. With the early settlers, and their comfortable

An early Indian method of cooking fish.

ceiled log-cabins, came the large stone fireplaces with their great copper pots and iron kettles, swinging upon iron cranes in the chimney-place. The little “Dutch oven” was also used, and was convenient, as it stood on legs and could be covered with hot coals as well as have them under it.

A drawing of General Washington’s camp gridiron is here shown. It was made from the original in the National Museum, at Washington, where many of the objects described in this article may be seen.

In those old days in the colonies, many methods were used for cooking, over and before the fire. There were horizontal, and vertically reversing gridirons. The latter would bring both

An Eskimo reindeer stew.
This is cooked indoors in a large, rectangular, soapstone vessel over a soapstone oil-lamp.

sides to the fire. Fowls were hung on iron rods suspended before the fire with dripping-pans be-neath them. Muffin-tins were propped up before the great fires so that their contents might get well browned, and, in the south, the old plantation

An Indian’s iron pot for boiling meat.

negroes cooked their “hoe-cake” on the blades of their field hoes. The great fireplaces, with their hanging pots and kettles, were used even after the first crude cook-stoves appeared, about the year 1850. After

Another method of using a pot or kettle.

the iron cook-stove had been perfected, came the steel range, and, later, the gas-range, and the oil or gasolene stoves. One little novelty in gas-stoves is worthy of mention. It is the camping- or cooking-stove which pleased Dr. Nansen so well that he took it with him on his polar expedition. It makes its own gas by vaporizing kerosene. A small pump forces the oil by air pressure into the tubes of the stove, where it is vaporized and burned. Cooking by steam was used on steamships and in large establishments for many years before a practical steam cooker was made for the home.

A plantation Negro cooking hoe-cake in her cabin.

The great advantage of these cookers is that nothing can burn in them. Food so cooked retains all its juices, and is made tender and appetizing. The cooking is done under steam pressure, as the doors are tightly closed. The one here illustrated is placed over a fire; water in the copper tank below is turned to steam, which circulates about the food and condenses on the conical top, from which it runs toward the sides of the cooker, instead of dripping into the food, and returns to the tank. When the water falls below a certain level, a whistle blows vigorously to call for “more water.”

About six years ago, the “fireless” cooker made its appearance. It does not cook without fire, but it does retain the cooking heat. Many models are now obtainable, some in box form with several deep cooking compartments. The accompanying illustration shows one of the round forms. The cast-iron (black) plates seen, one above and another below the cooking vessels, are first heated. When very hot, one or both may be used and radiate their heat in the apparatus. In this cooker, instead of several pads and a tight--

A settler’s stone fireplace. This shows the crane and, at the right, a “johnny-cake” being cooked by the hot fire as it is spread in a thick dough on a rough board.
A. The early Dutch oven. B. General Washington’s camp gridiron, with sliding handle for convenient packing.	A modern steam cooker on an oil-stove. Note the circular condenser on the top at right.
A sectional view of a fireless cooker and its cylindrical cover. Between the heated cast-iron plates, which show black in the drawing, are two cooking pans.	The latest electric cooker. Upon this two eggs have just been poached and the pan lifted to show the heating wires. Another cooking pan is underneath.

fitting lid, a large cylinder, closed at the top, is pushed over the iron plates and the cooking dishes, until its top forms the top of the cooker. The heat finds it difficult to get out of this closely fitting cylinder, so it remains to cook the food, which it does to perfection, from meats and cereals to corn-bread!

The inner sides of these cookers are packed with mineral wool—asbestos. In some of them, no heating-plates are used, but the food to be cooked is allowed to boil for a few minutes, and then, set into the cooker and tightly covered, the cooking process continues, until the food is ready for the table. A “home-made” fireless cooker was exhibited recently at the International Hygienic Congress at Washington. It was made by placing a large pail in a box of tightly packed hay, and is said to have cost only one dollar.

Our street-cars have for some time been heated by electricity. Electric cookers are still more modern, but we have electric toasters, griddles, ovens and ranges of various shapes and sizes, up to large cabinet affairs with heat indicators and clocks by which the cooking may be regulated. The principle used in the cooking apparatus is the same as that used in the car. The current from large wires is fed to smaller wires which offer a sudden resistance, and the heat thus produced soon becomes intense.

Harry B. Bradford.