A great many foods store well in a cool, but not necessarily cold, environment and the cooling uses no electricity, does not leave a carbon footprint, and, best of all, is free. A cold pantry uses creative ventilation and some skilled design to keep perishable foods cool.Ī cold pantry still has a place in a modern kitchen.
One solution for keeping things cool in the pre-electricity era was the cold pantry. Read more about cold pantries below.īefore the invention of the refrigerator, there were still all sorts of foods that needed to be kept cool, including dairy products, meats, and fresh produce. Used today primarily in Britain to mean what we call a pantry on this side of the Big Blue Pond.Īrchaic: a well-ventilated room for storing perishable items. Typically a cabinet or closet just off the kitchen or in the dining room where dishes and serving ware are stored.Ī Victorian term for a small, room, or tall cabinet for storing food. It is an old English term for a room (or more likely a shed) where food was stored in large barrels called "butts", hence "buttery". Has nothing whatsoever to do with butter. In a modern household, the serving area makes a convenient landing zone for loading groceries into the pantries - at least until you finally get around to hiring a butler. Today the tendency is to call any walk-through or walk-in pantry a "butler's" pantry, but this term is not strictly correct unless it includes a counter-height set-up and serving area, and possibly a small sink. Still, heat from the kitchen remained a potential problem, so a single swinging door was usually retained to keep the noise and heat at bay. Improvements in cooking technology, such as the natural gas or electric cookstove instead of coal and wood stoves made isolation of the kitchen from the dining area much less important to dining comfort. With the simplification of house design that occurred during the Arts & Crafts period of the early 20th century, the butler's pantry was largely eliminated and replaced with built-in cabinetry inside the dining room for storing dinnerware, linens, glassware, and silverware - all the things formerly stored in the pantry. The pantry usually had swinging doors at both ends which helped keep kitchen noise, heat, and odors away from the diners. Typically the butler would fetch the cooked food from the kitchen, divide it into serving portions, arrange it invitingly on dishware, then serve it in the dining room. Often it was not much more than a wide hallway equipped with ample countertop space and, commonly, a sink. The pantry was a serving area located between the kitchen and dining room. In the late Victorian age, the room where food was stored was the "larder" or "buttery".
Today it means a place where food is stored, and usually refers to one or more cabinets or a closet adjacent to the kitchen. Since 1900 the meaning of the word "pantry" has changed in America (but not in the UK). Instant, super easy, grocery list."Īmy, Christy and Terry at Eleven Magnolia Lane. Before you leave for the market, snap a photo with your cell phone. "Install a blackboard on the inside of your pantry door to jot down the things you need. "On high shelves, store boxes on their sides so their labels can be more easily read through the shelf mesh from below."