Karen Pinco » Old Sturbridge Village

Redware

Karen — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:03:43 +0000

In Wait for Their Return, my historical character needs appropriate dishes. Some of these dishes are made from redware, a kind of pottery that went into production in America in 1625. Redware was given its name because that was the color the clay turned after firing. The production of redware continued at high levels until the mid-19th century when the industrial revolution began to offer alternatives and many potters moved west or began to work in mills.
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In the photos below (taken at Old Sturbridge Village, MA), you can see a potter with wet hands turning what appears to be the beginning of a mug. The next step is to let the clay dry for several days before dipping it in a reddish brown glaze. When enough pottery is accumulated, it will be stacked inside the large kiln. The opening is bricked up and the pottery is fired by building a fire at the base of the kiln until a temperature of 1850 degrees F is reached. In the last photos, you see some of the finished products.

For more information about redware visit Old Sturbridge Village.

Open Hearth Cooking

Karen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:46:30 +0000

Wait for Their Return incorporates a lot of historical facts from the 1830s. To get the details as accurate as possible, I spent a huge amount of time reading and researching. The library has seen a lot of me this past year.
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I also made several trips to Sturbridge Village in order to get a feel for the time period (their reconstruction aims to set them in the year 1840).
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In my novel, a lot of attention is focused on an old kitchen and open hearth cooking. To get a better feel for this experience (library research can only take you so far), I spent an evening in Sturbridge Village participating in their open hearth cooking class.
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I peeled vegetables with an old fashioned knife (appreciation for my peeler grew) and measured ingredients in an entirely new manner (I felt like I was just guessing).
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I helped spit the meat, and watched as the interpreter placed it in a ‘tin kitchen’. You can see this tin kitchen in the photo below – it’s the silver half-cylinder facing the fire. This cooking utensil was a huge leap forward in its time as it allowed the cook to use the reflected heat of the fire to evenly roast a chicken or a cut of meat. We had to remember to turn the spit every ten minutes (no timer) and set the wire into the next notch. Before its invention, many a roast was burned on one side and nearly raw on the other (yuck).
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Frying with hot embers on the fireplace hearth is a whole different experience from using the stovetop – not to mention the level at which you work (the floor). Stay close to the fire too long and you overheat, stand too far away and it can grow rather chilly. You have to remember not to grab the cast iron handles bare-handed and grab them you must. Many rest on small tripod legs and are a bit tipsy. One wrong move and your dinner is on the floor in the ashes.
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As the daylight faded, we had to finish preparing the meal by candlelight. I was glad most of the cutting and chopping was done. We were informed that, by 1840 standards, we were working with an excessive number of candles.
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My favorite part was learning how to use the bake oven. The interpreters had arrived hours before us to prepare the oven. It takes between four and five hours of a lively fire to heat the bricks enough to bake bread. You can see the fire burning in the upper right corner. Many people think that the fire is built in the bottom opening with the bread placed in the upper opening. The lower opening is for collecting all the ashes you generate (those are carefully saved for soap making). When the oven was hot enough, we let the fire die out before carefully shoveling out the coals and sweeping out the interior with a wet broom. Our rolls were then inserted and a cast iron door was set in place.
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After a good three hours of work, we set the table, learned some 1840s manners (eat with your knife, not your fork) and enjoyed the results. It was wonderful! The roast was perfect, the fried vegetables were crispy, the rolls and pie perfect. The meal was easily one of the best I’d ever had.
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So, as I eye our fireplace at home and look online to see if you can still buy a ‘tin kitchen’ (you can), my husband grows nervous. Cast iron pans have entered my home and I would love nothing more than to install a crane (the iron arm that pots hang from) inside the firebox.

Soap, The Hard Way

Karen — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:54:36 +0000

I was at Sturbridge Village last weekend (detecting a theme?) and there happened to be two costumed interpreters making soap, the old way. In an earlier post, I mentioned that the ashes from all those wood fires were saved for making soap. I had a vague idea of the process, but took the opportunity to quiz them. Here is my understanding of the basic process in ten steps (if anyone knows better, please share). As I write this, I wish I’d had a recorder…
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Lye, the corrosive alkaline substance in soap (NaOH), is what lets soap do its job. In 1840, you obtained lye from all those ashes.
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1) Fill your wooden barrel with ashes. This barrel should have holes in the bottom.
2) Set it on your collecting stone (note the grooves in the stone beneath the barrel) and fill it with soft water (rain/stream water) but not so much that the water starts to flow. Leave it there for at least a day.
3) Start adding more water. Slowly. This will leach the lye from the ashes. Collect it by placing a bucket beneath the stone’s spout. Do not touch. Remember, its corrosive. My son reached out and the interpreter jumped to stop him.
4) An egg should float – straight up and down. If it floats like a boat, you need to add more water. If it doesn’t float at all, its too dilute and you need to boil the lye water to concentrate it.
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Meanwhile, you should be preparing your lard (animal fat).
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5) Melt your lard.
6) Heat up your lye water.
7) Mix the two together. I looked online and it looks like a ratio of 2 gallons of lye water mixed with 3 cups of melted lard is the goal.
8. Then you ‘prove’ the soap. This involves fine-tuning the ratio by looking to see how the soap falls when lifted with a knife. It shouldn’t be too long and ropy (needs more lye), nor should it fall in short, white pieces (needs more lard).
9) When the ratio is right, you have soft or liquid soap. If you want a bar of soap, there’s more to do (see step #10).
10) Add salt. This causes the soap to float to the top and a brown liquid to stay on the bottom. You skim off the soap. Once you’ve collected enough (you may have to re-melt it), you pour it into wooden molds and let it cool. Later, you can cut it into bars.
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If you want more details there’s a website called Traditional Soap Making that I consulted. I’d love to try this someday. Just once. I’m sure after one run through I’d be completely content to continue to buy my soap at the store.