Post by mary on Apr 21, 2003 15:41:32 GMT -5
At a recent historical demonstration, our group was questioned about the use of the dutch oven. Visitors are often surprised when I tell them that the dutch oven was a common item of frontier cookware.
There are many documents that cover the use of cooking implements of the 1830s. Susan Gordy has provided our board with the inventory of the personal estate of Galena resident James Jones "Dec’d, This 18th day of July 1833." His estate included an "oven with lid" valued at $1.25.
Author Benjamin P. Thomas in his Lincoln's New Salem asserted: Cooking was done over the open fire, sometimes on a "flat oven," or in a "Dutch oven,"; and with the skillet, frying-pan, iron pot, and kettle.
The Hon. Edward Wilson authored one of the better accounts, which included a specific mention of the dutch oven:
Much of the cooking was done at the fire place in iron skillets, and a large skillet with a cover and no handle, known as a dutch oven. Before breakfast over this oven was placed on the hearth and filled with three measures of corn dough. And for dinner this bread was cooked and known as corn dodgers, and was the sweetest and best bread ever eaten. Not a live coal was put on or under the oven, only hot ashes, and the same process repeated for supper. Don't imagine this was the only bread, for we had all the forms of wheat bread we have to day.
There are many documents that cover the use of cooking implements of the 1830s. Susan Gordy has provided our board with the inventory of the personal estate of Galena resident James Jones "Dec’d, This 18th day of July 1833." His estate included an "oven with lid" valued at $1.25.
Author Benjamin P. Thomas in his Lincoln's New Salem asserted: Cooking was done over the open fire, sometimes on a "flat oven," or in a "Dutch oven,"; and with the skillet, frying-pan, iron pot, and kettle.
The Hon. Edward Wilson authored one of the better accounts, which included a specific mention of the dutch oven:
Much of the cooking was done at the fire place in iron skillets, and a large skillet with a cover and no handle, known as a dutch oven. Before breakfast over this oven was placed on the hearth and filled with three measures of corn dough. And for dinner this bread was cooked and known as corn dodgers, and was the sweetest and best bread ever eaten. Not a live coal was put on or under the oven, only hot ashes, and the same process repeated for supper. Don't imagine this was the only bread, for we had all the forms of wheat bread we have to day.
