Larder v Pantry
Photo © Rob Jones
At home, in the big old house in the country we had both a larder and a pantry. And they certainly had different uses.
Quick check on definitions:
Larder - A Cupboard or small room used, especially in the past, for storing food in someone’s home.
Pantry - A small room or large cupboard in a house where food is kelp.
OK - so that didn’t help.
Our pantry was more or a cold store, it was also called the Scullery (defined as a small kitchen or room at the back of the house for washing dishes and other dirty household work.)
And in this pantry was what we called a ‘Safe.’ This was a tin contraption with gauze sides in which we kept meat and cheese and the like. Mainly to keep the flies off it I think. I believe they were common in Victorian times and clearly also in my childhood. I seem to have had a Victorian upbringing. There were even bells in the kitchen to alert servants that they were needed in various rooms. As kids we’d run about the house pulling the cords that still worked to make the bells ring.
Corsham - Photo © Rob Jones
Anyhow … so the meat and cheese hung around in the safe which was in the scullery/pantry.
All the dried goods were in the larder, which was this utilitarian item of furniture with a drop down table which doubled up as a prep table for baking. And in this larder was all manner of things which were prized, like dried fruit, and candied peel, rice paper and flour, semolina and rice. The upper part was devoted to spice jars. The lower part, nearest the floor for things in tins - mainly because mice were endemic. It was always a natural disaster when the mice got any higher than hip height, or weevils got into the flour. The contents were regularly checked and items used.
Here, also, was all the tinned fruit and the good things to have with them like tins of custard, condensed milk and ... my favourite … evaporated milk.
I do like a well stocked larder. I look into some kitchen cabinets these days and sigh with sadness. They are where adventures begin.
RJ
