The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600-1850 (Cultures of Early Modern Europe)

The kitchen is an important space in the construction of domestic relations, between husband and wife, masters, mistresses and servants, and householders and outsiders. Sara Pennell traces the emergence of the domestic kitchen as a space that helped make houses homes from the 17th century through to the middle of the 19th, and explores how the kitchen became a space of specialised activity, sociability and strife. Drawing upon texts, images, surviving structures and objects, this study serves to open up the space of the early modern English kitchen to the reader.