Early cooking in Ellicott City

From hearth cooking 250 years ago to cookstoves, from beehive bake ovens to Reip ovens to ovens in the cookstoves, there were many changes in cooking during Ellicott City's first one hundred years. EC was the home of the first Maryland cookbook author, and another woman author had a successful 1873 fundraising cookbook.




This will be an informal, quick post describing how to heat and use the hearth and ovens, from my thirty years baking in ovens and hearth cooking. So no period sources.

Hearth
The fire provided heat for the kitchen/house, boiled water or soup in pots hung on the crane (this large hearth has two) over the flame, and it also was reflected off the tin oven to bake small items. The coals were placed under a frypan on a trivet (this spider is lovely, but pan has too long legs) or put over and under the dutch oven (bake kettle) to bake bread, cakes, pies and other baked goods. Roomy hearth to demo at Carroll County Farm Museum in Westminster.

Bake oven
There were a wide variety of shapes, sizes and building material; also flues and or holes, and some had ash holes/chutes. Most were heated by building a fire inside the oven for a few hours, and when the bricks or other material had absorbed the heat, the remaining coals and ash were shoveled out onto the hearth to use, or raked into an ash hole/chute. Shut the oven door to let the heat soak in, then test the heat - the two most common ways is put your arm in and count; or put flour or "small bits of dough" (1857) on the floor. Sue and I would go up and baked in this upper outside oven at Landis Valley Museum at Lancaster, PA

Reip oven
This metal wall oven, made in Baltimore from 1824 into the 1860s, was continually heated like the round Rumford Roaster, by having a fire in the small square box under the oven, with the ash falling into the lower box. Elizabeth Ellicott Lea had one at her Sandy Spring home and there is one in a Howard County private home HERE. Hampton NHS Towson (not used):

Wood or coal cook stoves
At first placed in the hearth, then with longer stove pipes the iron stoves could be placed along the kitchen wall. The fire was built up in the fire box to heat the top and oven. Flat pans or pots could be on the hot top, or lift the round lids and special pots with narrower bottom section fit down in the hole. This stove is at Dr. Samuel Mudd's house in Waldorf MD, yes the "your name is Mudd" who set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg at this house.

2 EARLY COOKBOOK AUTHORS WITH ELLICOTT CITY CONNECTIONS.

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (1793-1858), first Maryland cookbook, Domestic Cookery, 3 editions starting 1845. Born and raised in the George Ellicott home across from the flour mill. She married a son of the Lea mills of Wilmington DE in the Quaker meeting house of EC. They moved from Delaware to north of Sandy Spring, MD. Short bio in this EC blog HERE. Other info HERE

Jane Gilmor Howard (1801-1890), Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen fundraing cookbook, and previously raised millions for starving Southerners. Lived at “Wyoming” for several summers, her daughter attended Patapsco Female Institute. Her Brother-in-law Gov. George Howard inherited “Waverly” in Marriottsville, HoCo. Howard County was named for her father-in-law. HERE. More in this EC blog HERE


23 Maryland Museums with hearth cooking demonstrations HERE. One museum with two working hearths has been sold as a private home, so no longer on list. Most are resuming demos, but check with the museum for dates and times. A fun, quick way to see how early cooking was done.

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea Domestic Cookery (Baltimore, 1845, 1846, 1851 editions, reprints for decades) blog posts HERE

Jane Gilmor Howard. Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen 1873. blog posts HERE

Maryland Food History blog posts HERE

28 Maryland food history taped talks HERE

Researching Food History blog – my other blog, many recipes, info, period sources HERE

EC250 - Ellicott City celebrates 250 years HERE

The photo is one of three hearths in the 1758 Schifferstadt Museum in Frederick. The oven is a long squirrel tail.


©2022 Patricia Bixler Reber
Forgotten history of Ellicott City & Howard County MD