In-Person Lecture: Brick Cooking Stoves in the American Colonies

In the late 1980s, archaeologists working at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest plantation found a complete cast iron grate in the remains of the early nineteenth-century kitchen. This grate was once a part of a brick cooking stove utilized by enslaved cook Hannah to prepare meals for Jefferson’s family when they stayed at the house in Bedford, Virginia. This style of the raised cooking surface was not unique to Poplar Forest or Jefferson, but they were rare in the early nineteenth century. Raised cooking surfaces have been in use for centuries in many cultures around the world. One of the earliest depictions of this type of masonry stove occurred in Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera dell’arte del cucinare (1570). The illustrations within depict stoves almost identical to Jefferson’s version which Scappi called morello per pignatte. In France, they were called potagers and became integral to French cuisine with its delicate sauces that required…