Kitchen Furniture and Equipment

The best description of the contents of a medieval kitchen was written by Alexander Neckham in the twelfth century. Despite this early date, comparison with inventories indicates that many fifteenth-century kitchens were equipped in a virtually identical manner.¹

In the vivarium let fish be kept, in which they can be caught by net, fork spear or light hook, or with a basket. [Sifted bread flour is] used also for feeding small fish. Small fish for cooking should be put in a pickling mixture, that is water mixed with salt… To be sure, pickling is not for all fish, for these are of different kinds. [There should be] a pickling vat and knives for cleaning fish.

Also there should be hot water for scalding fowl. Let there also be a cleaning place where the entrails and feathers of ducks and other domestic fowl can be removed and the birds cleaned. There should also be a garde-robe pit through which the filth of the kitchen may be evacuated.

In the kitchen there should be a small table on which cabbage may be minced, and also lentils, peas, shelled beans, beans in the pod, millet, onions, and other vegetables of the kind that can be cut up. The chief cook should have a cupboard in the kitchen where he may store many aromatic spices, and bread flour sifted through a sieve…may be hidden away there.

There should also be pots, tripods, a mortar, a pestle, a hatchet, a stirring stick, a hook, a cauldron, a bronze vessel, a small pan, a baking pan, a meathook, a griddle, small pitchers, a trencher, a bowl, a platter, a pepper mill and a handmill…[and] a large spoon for removing foam and scumming.