UK Tudors Kitchens, Cowdray Castle Tudor Kitchens

Perhaps the most famous of Tudor Kitchens is the one at Hampton Court Palace.

The ‘kitchen’ was not as we know ours today. It was vastly larger, and was also a complex of offices, storehouses and larders, preparation rooms, cellars for wine and ale, a bakery, a confectionary (probably the only room where women would have worked), dry rooms for spices, and more besides.

Through careful research into the records and with real life experimentation by food archaeologists, it is known that to work preparing, cooking and serving food in these hot, exhausting places, in front of huge open fires, required fit, adult men capable of hard physical work, and needed a system of highly important organisation. Here was a world devoted to the production of food; cooking on a colossal scale. The men who worked in King Henry V111’s kitchen would need to be capable of buying, preparing, cooking and serving for 600 hungry people, twice a day.

The royal household ate a lot of protein and salt, and loved their meat. Whole carcasses roasted on the huge spits in front of the open fires. Many birds were eaten and a lot of fish. Vegetables and fruits grown at The Palace would be brought in every day to be cooked, as well as using herbs and exotic spices imported from the Orient and Europe.

Imagine the sounds of the voices as the men share their work in the kitchen, the sight of the variety of foods, the heat of the roaring fires, and the delectable smells of cooking. Bread fresh from the oven, pies and tarts brimming with egg custards dusted with nutmeg and flavoured with pure rose water, meat pies, spinach and cream open tarts. This is just a minute example of day to day cooking.

Smaller but just as important to a different way of life, is Winkhurst Kitchen at The Weald and Downland Museum, where we can see a perfect example of a kitchen dated around 1545. This kitchen would be appropriate for a manor house, and serve 20-30 people a day, and women would work here cooking and brewing the ale. Here is only one fire to the side of the room and without a chimney, but around this fire you could roast, braise, boil, simmer, poach, fry and deep fry. It was, therefore, extremely important to have a good and constant supply of wood, and a good understanding of what heats different woods can produce. Utensils used around the fire would be made from iron or clay.

This kitchen would not cook as much meat; their animals were kept for what they could produce, such as wool from sheep, milk from cattle etc. but every part of a pig could be used except his squeak! They relied on seasonal vegetables, fruit, herbs and possibly some imported spices and some dried fruits. They would bake bread every day in a separate oven, and as the oven began to cool pies would be popped in to cook.

Wherever the kitchen and whoever was cooking and preparing the food, colour and presentation were extremely important, hygiene strictly maintained, and manners adhered to. The kitchen of any house whether castle or manor - the design, use and who used it - tells its own story of the period. All the senses were engaged - sight, sound, smell, touch, speech and, if course, taste .
What does today's modern kitchen tell us?

The Palace of Cowdray was started in 1520, when the site of the earlier building had been cleared. Between 1539 – 42 many additions and alterations were made, some of which were in honour of entertaining King Henry V111. The Tudor period was the heyday of this beautiful palace; and in order to entertain not only Henry V111, but other guests of high status (their host being the Earl of Southampton), a large kitchen would be essential.

In the southeast corner of Cowdray is the massive hexagonal kitchen tower. Its internal diameter is 26ft or 30ft from corner to corner, and so substantial it was not damaged by the fire of 1793.

Standing in this huge kitchen you can almost hear the hustle and bustle of all that would be going on around you. Beneath you a stone floor, high above you a lantern-like series of four large windows providing essential light, and around the walls four massive arches. Three of these would have accommodated open fires, one with the original spit; and the fourth arch is still filled with a large hot plate, with two rows of round holes for saucepans and dishes, which were heated by two fires beneath. Behind the hot plate is a window giving light to this working area. This can only be imagined as a very busy and important kitchen.

Built around the kitchen tower (see picture below) on the west side, were the kitchen offices and the scullery, and the cellars under the South Gallery. To the north of the kitchen was an open court, leading to the ‘kitchen entry’, a passage 26ft long and flanked by the pantry and the buttery. Food to be served would have to be carried across the open court, and along the ‘kitchen entry’ into the magnificent Buck Hall. Here was one of the noblest rooms in

England

, built somewhat in the style of the halls at Hampton Court.

What was it like to work in a kitchen such as this, cooking for possibly 200 people a day, twice a day? Wood management was very important and a huge quantity would be needed, and of different types for different heats, enough to fuel the ovens, the open fires and the fire under the spit, every day. So it would be hot. Everyone working in the kitchen would have specific jobs, from fire boy to the top chef; it would be arduous and busy. You would have to be fit.

In the palace of Cowdray the people would eat a lot of fresh meat, cooked over the spit or braised in a cauldron by the fire, seasonal game, and fish boiled or wrapped in pastry and baked. Many birds would be eaten, and always a wonderful soup called pottage which provided a staple part of most meals and could be made from whatever was at hand. Vegetables and fruits dug, picked and pulled from the garden. Herbs to enhance and complement all the flavours, and exotic spices imported from the Orient and Europe. Sugar was very expensive and probably only used for guests such as King Henry V111th, but fruit and honey cooked into delicious sweet concoctions offered alternatives. There would be pies, pastries, open tarts and many salads besides; they were not short of good food.

Here was a world, not unlike the kitchens of Hampton Court, devoted to food, cooking on a massive scale in order to produce tasty, well presented, imaginative and colourful dishes to please the guests. This would be down to the good design of the kitchen and the skill and knowledge of the cooks to transform these raw foods into high quality and nourishing dishes.

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