Old-Time Hearth Cookin’

Two hundred years ago, this is how you cooked. First, you relighted your fireplace if it was out--probably using straw, not paper, to start the wood, because paper was expensive. If you had a source of flame, such as a burning candle, you lighted a long splinter called a spill from it and carried the flame to the fireplace on the spill.

If you were so unlucky, or lazy, as to have all your fires go out, you had to start a fresh one by striking sparks onto tinder that was easily lighted like dried mushrooms or scorched rags. There were things called matches, but you couldn’t strike them--a match was a piece of cloth or wood that had been dipped in boiling sulfur to make it more likely to catch fire from a spark.

Once the fireplace was going, pots and skillets could go on the hearth floor because they had legs to hold them above the coals. Other pots could be hung from the pothook in the chimney.

If you wanted to roast something, you set it on a hand-turned spit in front of the fire. Never over the coals, as we do on barbecues today, because the fat that dripped out had to be saved for frying and soap making. If you couldn’t afford a metal spit, you might hang a piece of meat from a stout cord called a string and spin it around on that.

Needless to say, you had to keep messing with the fire to make sure the cooking went the way you wanted. And for baking, you needed a brick oven (not everybody had one), which took an hour or more to heat. There were no oven thermometers--you judged whether the oven was hot enough by the color of the bricks, or by throwing a handful of flour on them. If the flour browned and gave off sparks, the oven was probably hot enough.

Then you raked out the burning coals and put in your breads, and when they were done you might bake smaller items like cakes, pies and custards. And if you guessed the cooking time wrong, you shamefacedly told your family the terrible words, “We had a bad bake day,” and you ate scorched or doughy bread all week.