The Kitchen

Before modern preservation, unless it was eaten right away, food was preserved through pickling, dehydrating, smoking, or other methods. Hence, the numerous large vessels and kitchen tools. There is no solid evidence of a permanent kitchen fixture outside of this one. This means that cooking year-round was likely done here. To prevent kitchen and house fires, the floor would have been hard-packed dirt.

This room illustrates and reinforces the idea of someone’s station: one group is seen as better than another. Enslaved individuals were “here, but not here” - they were present to serve, not to be a part of daily conversations and activities. In addition to the practicality of the workspace, the rising heat from cookfires would heat the rest of the house, and the location would be suitable for having cooking activities go on while other activities are completed. The kitchen area reinforces the “out of sight, out of mind” idea; the literal placement of the kitchen beneath the house reinforces this idea of station.

Enslaved individuals who worked in domestic roles such as child rearing, seamstresses, cooks, etc., would likely have slept in the main house, or where they worked, such as this kitchen.

Lots of the food cooked in the kitchen would have been grown as such :

Media Collections, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.