Kitchen House

Kitchen House. . In the 1800s, a house fire would have been catastrophic, so food was prepared in this kitchen house and carried to the main house. Food was cooked in cast iron pots and pans in the fireplace and later, on a cast iron wood-burning stove. The two mainstays of the southern diet were ground corn and pork; chicken and wild game also provided meat for the table. Many other vegetables and fruits also thrived in the long southern growing season and were preserved for the winter in glass jars. Fresh butter was made in churns and fresh eggs were readily available., Although the kitchen house was built at the same time as the main house, a fire in the mid 1900s caused the front wall to be replaced and later the unstable chimney was removed. The dinner bell located between the kitchen house and the main house was used to call the family to meals., Did you know… , The Scots-Irish settlers like the Mable family grew Irish potatoes, barley and oats, which were familiar crops from home. From the Native Americans, the earliest settlers learned how to grow corn, beans and squash. From the enslaved people of West Africa, the settlers added more variety to their tables by learning to grow okra, black-eyed peas, melons, sesame, sweet potatoes and, on the coast, rice., [Captions] , . (Left) Kitchen House in the mid-1900s , . (Right) Hearth in the Kitchen House Photo by Deborah Karwisch