At The Hearth Of Another Time

By Eliza Hallabeck

Dressed in timely attire and armed with vegetable soup, Patty Graves, a volunteer for the Newtown Historical Society, worked over the hearth at the Matthew Curtiss House on Main Street this past Sunday, November 15, during an open house.

The fire in the hearth sent the smell of smoke through the building, which serves as the headquarters for the historical society and as a house museum, as she built the fire large enough to cook with. Ms Graves used large gloves to protect her hands from the hot touch of her cooking utensils, heavy pots, ceramic jug, and iron hooks to hold pots over the fire.

In the ceramic jug Ms Graves had poured apple cider, because ceramic jugs could be placed next to open fires to warm the contents while entertaining guests. A moist towel had to be placed over the jug, because ash and soot from the fire could fall into the jug, she said.

As the third course for the meal she made on Sunday, Ms Graves asked her assistants, Erin Glaberson, Mairin Hayes, and Shirley Paproski, to prepare a mixture for pumpkin bread.

Using few modern utensils, the pumpkin bread was mixed while Ms Graves explained to guests at the house, including a troop of Boy Scouts, what the dangers and workings of cooking with an open fire would have been like in Colonial times.

“The spices I would have had locked up,” Ms Graves said while describing how she wanted her helpers to make the pumpkin bread. “They were just so precious.”

Ms Graves said the mother of a home would have most likely kept a key to open and get spices from a cabinet, because they were rare. It was hard to know when the next chance to get spices would be, she said.

Women in the families would have spent two days a week baking, according to Ms Graves.

“The thing you are going to cook with the most is the Dutch oven,” she said.

Until the 1790s, beehive ovens, or Dutch ovens, in fireplaces would have been placed in the back of the fireplace, but after that point they were brought to the front like the one at the Matthew Curtiss House, according to Ms Graves.

“The pan should never touch the bottom of a Dutch oven,” she said.

In order to bake in the oven, coals needed to be placed on the bottom of the oven to protect the bottom of pans from overheating.

It was also a practice for women to splash the bottom of their skirts with water to protect them from catching on fire while cooking. Women wore long skirts at this time, and, Ms Graves said, this caused a danger when working with the open fire. Doing things like leaning over to take pots off a hook hung over the fire could have been a problem.

“They mostly died from infection that came from the burn,” said Ms Graves while correcting a common misconception about women dying from fires from cooking.

The food was served to visitors by the end of the day, and Ms Graves said the cooking demonstration is something she has done at the house before. She also demonstrates it during the historical society’s summer camp, she said.