Hearth Cooking at Plimoth Plantation
An interpreter cooking on a hearth at Plimoth Plantation in the fall of 2003. This firepalce is a fire built on the dirt floor against a wall under a chimney — the most primitive form of the modern fireplace.
Plimoth Plantation, located near the original Plimoth settlement in what is now Massachusetts, is one of the most impressive living history villages anywhere. Interpreters in costume, speaking an 18th century English, go about their daily chores. Each interpreter plays the role of an individual know to have lived in Plimoth in the year 1627. The scholarship that underpins the performances of the interpreters runs deep. The curators at Plimoth continue to do research of their own, and to keep up with the latest research into early 17th century American life.
Hearth cooking is my own love. I can think of no better place to visit anywhere in the world than Plimoth in late fall. As winter approaches cold winds blow off the water. The fires that burn in the corners of each house warm the soul as they cook the food.
The houses in this recreated Plimoth settlement have fires built against a wall under a chimney. Technology is often a two-edged sword. It is interesting comparing the chimney technology in the European Plimoth settlement with the technology of the Native American settlement. Not so many hundreds of years before the English settlers came to North America the standard European fireplace was a fire built on the floor of the room. While a fire built towards the center of a room — and in a room without a chimney — means smoke — it also means that all of the heat from the fire can be trapped in the room. The Native American structure at Plimoth includes a smoke hole in the roof. I have stayed at houses in Kenya, in which a fire burns in the center of the room, and there is no smoke hole, and I have also seen houses without smoke holes in China. The smoke hole on the Native American structure could be closed, and presumably was closed during the coldest winter days.
In terms of fireplace technology, the Plimoth fireplaces are primitive. They consist of a fire built against a wall under a chimney of the most basic kind — a straight shaft to the sky. Modern chimneys — and chimneys in more expensive structures than those built by the first settlers — are more complex. Where the chimney starts — the throat — is typically narrower than the main shaft of the chimney. This speeds up airflow and reduces down drafts.
Plimoth Plantation fireplace chimney – 17th century
Looking straight up the chimney to the fireplace pictured below.
Plimoth Plantation hearth
The photograph, above, of a cold hearth, illustrates the house construction near the fireplace, the main hearth-cooking tools, and the general appearance of a working hearth in a one-room house of the period. In terms of fire safety, notice the large bolder just behind the hanging brass pot. The area right around the fire was built to be as inflammable as possible. The house wall is a combination of wood and cob — a mixture of clay and straw.
The interpreters at Plimoth make food that is beautiful to look at and that tastes wonderful. As the period depicted is the Plimoth when new — and thus poor — the cooking is simple: puddings, such as corn pudding, salt cod, pancakes, roasted meat, and corn breads.
Notice all the ash in the fireplace. A working fireplace always has a large layer of ash. I talk about this at some length in my book, The Magic of Fire. Ash is used to regulate the rate at which wood burns. Importantly, ash is used to bank the fire at night, and when someone leaves the house in the daytime. Banking wood and embers with ash reduces the risk of fire while one is asleep or away — and as importantly it preserves the fire. There will be glowing embers amongst the ash even days after a got fire is banked.
The floor of Plimoth Plantation houses is dirt. You will notice that there is no real separation between where the fireplace ends and the room begins. The fire sits in a corner of the room and ash spreads out a little into the room from where logs burn. Hot water was heated in a pot hanging from the pot hook and some other cooking was conducted from a hanging pot as well. However, Plimoth settles also had three-legged pots, and frying pans, and grills. All of these were used in front of the fire. Food was either cooked from side heat — the heat falling on the side of the pot from the fire — and or from embers shoveled out of the fireplace under, and even on top of a pot lid.
House in Plimoth Plantation
To the extent possible, food cooked at Plimoth Plantation is food they grow at the Plantation in the gardens within the settlement. While many of us think of raised beds as an innovation of the organic gardening movement of the 1970’s as popularized by Alan Chadwich through John Jeavons book, How to Grow More Vegetables: And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, and in England by John Seymore, The Self Sufficient Gardener, in fact raised beds were an established method for growing vegetables in 17th century England, and thus also in the early English Settlements. The kitchen gardens surrounding the Plimoth Plantation houses are, just for themselves, worth the visit. Sparsely, sage, marjoram, rosemary, and thyme, favorite English herbs grow in the gardens along with carrots, breccias, and other vegetables. You can feel the connection between the lives of the people who lived in Plimoth and the food they ate.
The interpretation of hearth cooking at Plimoth — including the selection of tools and pots used for hearth cooking — comes from studying 17th century Dutch paintings, from period writings, from archeology, and from period household inventories. I would like to emphasize that at Plimoth, as at the other major reenactment sites — including Williamsburg, Sturbridge, and Deerfield — the curators are scholars. They try only to demonstrate what can be shown to have been practiced based on primary sources. This will, inevitably, leave out hearth cooking methods that may have been practiced — ember and ash cooking are examples — but for which there is little or no recorded evidence.
When you visit Plimoth you enter a stage. You are within the play. I love live theater and have seen a great many plays. Plimoth is great theater. Because the theater is so great as Theater, I hate to diminish the statement by adding that the Plimoth Plantation full-immersion style of presenting the past is also an astonishingly effective means of communicating information.
We can never know exactly how people lived their lives in the past but I sense that of the many possible pasts that could be derived from reading the historic record, the life, as depicted in Plimoth, feels truthful. I think because the houses are so small and so filled with the details of daily life — of a lived-in life — unmade beds, piles of dirty clothing — everyone was not neat in the past and so everyone at Plimoth is not neat — one feels embraced by the experience — by the dream of 1627. This is also, again, about the depth of the theater presented.
I travel a great deal. I would say that the relationship between the visitors and the Plimoth interpreters seemed closer to the relationship between tourists visiting a distant culture than that of tourists streaming through a museum. The world created at Plimoth feels so authentic that it really feels like being in a foreign place. As someone who wants to move to most places I visit — I definitely wanted to move to Plimoth Plantation.
For those of you interested in hearth cooking, what differentiates Plimoth from the other — and later — American historic reenactment sites is that the cooking fireplace is within the main room of the house. At Plimoth, isn’t a “cook” cooking, it is the woman of the house cooking in her role as keeper of the home. The woman cooks, but she also does other things, talks to a neighbor, pounds grain, sews. She isn’t always watching what is cooking — so there is a naturalness and feeling of accessibility that is unique amongst the historic reenactment sites.
When you visit Plimoth, pay attention to the little details — the mortar and pestles, the chopping blocks, the dishes. Everything forms a harmonious whole. A friend — a recent immigrant to the U.S. from a poorer country — recently asked me what I though was required in a kitchen to prepare good food. She had recently been to several very elaborate kitchens, ones with huge commercial stoves and refrigerators and every kitchen gadget one can imagine. I told her that all that is needed is a good source of heat, a sharp knife, and a love of cooking in your heart. One of the best meals I ever ate — and this is best in terms of complexity of presentation and taste — was in Zanzibar. It was a meal cooked in a kitchen that had a stove that was three stones, and by way of equipment had a chopping board, a coconut grater, a tea kettle, and spoon, a knife, and a single aluminum saucepan. By contrast, the equipment in the Plimoth houses are those of a palace kitchen.