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What You Might Not Know About The Kitchen

Today, there is a room in our house that can trace its history back to the first open fires which early bands of humans used to cook food over. What you might not know about the kitchen, then, could come as a surprise, especially when it’s realized that these fascinating rooms owe some of their development to the need to streamline work on the factory floor.

For most of the history of humans, the room that we look at today and where food is kept, prepared and sometimes eaten, consisted of nothing more than a spot outside the home where an open campfire was kept and food was cooked on. Generally speaking, it was only the wealthy classes in most societies like the Greeks and Romans where a separate room in the home was devoted to food preparation.

Instead, they concentrated more on the cook pots and utensils that were used to cook food over an open flame rather than a permanent room in a home, such as it was, that was dedicated to food preparation. The Romans were probably the first people to attempt to bring kitchens to the masses when their governments constructed very large public kitchens for the benefit of the commonalty.

The lack of the kitchen in the home — with the exception of the relatively wealthy — carried on for much of history and most people didn’t give it a second thought. For example, Pioneer American colonizers living on the frontier often times had a single room cabin and a fireplace over which food was prepared. They would mark off an area around the fireplace as a kitchen.

Improvement in cook stoves and ranges from those days is just as responsible for the design and eventual form of the kitchen as we know it today, for along with the creation of improved stoves came the ability to bring those stoves into the home. Additionally, the development of modern-day plumbing that brought running water into the home meant a kitchen could be made for most of the common classes.

Like just about anything else that has its origins in initial creation of mass production techniques during the Industrial Revolution, home technologies such as the appliance that go into kitchens soon became ever more common for the lower and middle classes which meant that they could begin to consider setting aside a separate room in the home that could be entirely devoted to food preparation.

Additionally, efforts undertaken by scientists and engineers to improve the efficiency of work processes are partly responsible for many design touches found in kitchens today. The thinking was that women who had more efficient kitchens would spend less time in the home cooking and more time working in the factory. Some of these kitchens were very small and compact but highly efficient.

Along with the growth of indoor plumbing and the electrification of even rural areas in the early to mid-20th century, came the improvement and sophistication of the kitchen in the home. Today, while one might not look like one from just a half-century ago, just about every room intended for the heating and cooking of food for the family owes its history to those early kitchens.

Matthew Kerridge is an expert in kitchen design. If you want more information about types of kitchen or are looking for a trusted kitchen retailer please visit http://www.wrenkitchens.com