The Victorian Era

What Was a Victorian Kitchen Like?

Article · Society & Daily Life · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Victorian kitchen was the working room of the household: the place where the food was prepared, the meals were cooked, the preserves were made, the bread was baked, the beer was brewed, the wine was stored, the cleaning was done, the washing was done, the ironing was done, and the mending was done. The kitchen was a complex and varied room, and the kitchen of the Who were the Victorian upper class?, the kitchen of the How did the middle class grow in the Victorian era?, and the kitchen of the working class were very different affairs. The history of the Victorian kitchen is part of the wider story of Victorian Food and Dining.

The Kitchen of the Upper Class

The kitchen of the great country house was a complex of rooms, including the main kitchen, the scullery, the larder, the pantry, the still room, the dairy, the bake house, the brew house, the laundry, and the kitchen garden. The main kitchen was a large, high-ceilinged room, often placed in the basement of the house, with a stone floor, a great cast-iron range, long deal work tables, and dressers and shelves crowded with the copper pots, pans, moulds, and other utensils of the period. The kitchen of the great country house was staffed by a large team of servants, headed by the cook and including the under-cook, the pastry-cook, the kitchen maids, the scullery maids, the still-room maids, the dairy maids, and the kitchen boys, supported beyond the kitchen itself by the baker, the brewer, the cellar man, and the gardeners of the kitchen garden.

The great cast-iron range of the period was the centrepiece of the kitchen. The most famous of the Victorian ranges were the kitcheners of the 1870s and 1880s, manufactured by firms such as the Carron Company of Falkirk, Smith & Wellstood of Bonnybridge, the Musgrave Company of Bolton, and the Davis Company. A typical range was a cast-iron box of some 6 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 4 feet high, with a roasting oven on one side, a baking oven on the other, a hot plate in the middle, a boiler for hot water at the back, and a warming closet at the side. The great range was stoked with coal, and it was the principal source of heat for the kitchen, of hot water for the kitchen, of the bread oven, of the roasting oven, of the baking oven, of the hot plate, and of the warming closet.

The kitchen of the great country house was equipped with a long list of new and improved equipment. The jack for roasting meat — a clockwork-driven spit that turned the joint before the open fire — was a feature of the great country house kitchen of the 1840s and 1850s. The gas stove, introduced in the 1850s by the Leeds and Bradford gas companies, was a feature of the late Victorian kitchen. The ice box, the predecessor of the refrigerator, was a feature of the upper-class kitchen from the 1850s onwards; the refrigerator, with its compression system, was a feature of the upper-class kitchen from the 1880s onwards. The mincing machine, the mortar and pestle, the rolling pin, the moulds, the jelly bag, the copper for boiling laundry, the bread bin, the cake tin, the pie mould, the pudding basin, the steamer, the bain-marie, the whisk, the sieve, the colander, the grater, the lemon squeezer, and the egg slicer were the central utensils of the upper-class kitchen.

The Kitchen of the Middle Class

The kitchen of the middle class was a smaller, simpler room than the kitchen of the great country house, and it was staffed by a smaller team of servants, often no more than a cook and a maid-of-all-work. The principal features of the middle-class kitchen were the cast-iron range, the deal table, the dresser, the stone sink, the copper for heating water, and the adjoining pantry or larder, with the pots, pans, kettles, and other utensils of the household arranged on shelves and hooks.

The middle-class kitchen was typically a basement room of the terraced house, the semi-detached villa, or the detached villa in the new suburbs of Clapham, Camberwell, Brixton, Dulwich, Hampstead, Highgate, and Stoke Newington. The Dolly Varden kitchen of the 1870s and 1880s was the colourful, well-equipped middle-class kitchen of the period, with its blue-and-white tiles, its polished brass, its deal table scrubbed white, its dresser, its range, its copper, and its sink. The Dolly Varden kitchen was named after the buxom, fresh-faced heroine of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge (1841), who became a fashion icon of the period.

The Kitchen of the Working Class

The kitchen of the working class was a smaller and simpler room than the kitchen of the middle class, and it was typically a multi-purpose room, used for cooking, eating, washing, working, and socialising. Its principal features were a small cast-iron range or open grate, a deal table, a few chairs, a cupboard, and a handful of pots, pans, and kettles, with water often carried in from a shared pump or tap in the yard.

The working-class kitchen was typically a ground-floor room of the back-to-back house, the terraced house, or the tenement, and the kitchen was the centre of the working-class family life. The working-class wife of the period would spend the day in the kitchen, preparing the breakfast, washing the children, mending the clothes, cooking the dinner, baking the bread, brewing the tea, and minding the baby. The working-class kitchen was typically a small, dark, and smoky room, with a single window, a stone floor (in the urban areas), a deal table, a few wooden chairs, a dresser, a small cast-iron range, and a chimney corner. The working-class kitchen was the principal setting of the working-class family life, and it is part of the story of How did Victorians treat the poor?.

The Daily Rhythm

The daily rhythm of the Victorian kitchen was unchanging. The day began with the preparation of the breakfast (eggs, bacon, kippers, toast, marmalade, tea, and coffee). Once breakfast was cleared away, the long work of cooking dinner began — the joint, the vegetables, the pudding, the cheese, and the bread. When dinner was done, tea preparation started in earnest: sandwiches, cakes, scones, clotted cream, jam, butter, and the pot itself. Supper — bread, cheese, and beer — followed once tea was cleared. The day ended with the cleaning of the kitchen, the washing of the dishes, the preparation of the next day’s meals, the laying of the fire, and the going to bed.