Chafing

dishes are

Synonymous with Luxury

The extravagant banquets of ancient Greece and Rome

depended on them for drama at the table; the ruins of Pompeii show

the evidence of their status.  Some of their aura rose from

their association with the noble host, himself preparing a delicacy

for the entertainment and delectation of his honored guests, as he

proved, at the same time, his cultural sophistication and wealth. 

With the passage of centuries, very little has changed.  Copper,

silver, bronze, and iron, valuable metals in their early development,

continued in use even as they became more common, because they worked

so well.  And so to this day, the erudite mistress of the dining

table may tote out her best fondue service (an adapted chafing dish,

after all) and impress her guests with both her savvy and her

expensive, fine imported chocolate.

Chafing

dishes, often connected to elegant

entertaining, have also remained in the batteries

de cuisine because they worked so well. 

During all those centuries of cooking near raging fire, it was a

major challenge to maintain a low gentle heat.  Certainly there

was no knob with which to turn down the fire, and even small piles of

coals on the hearth required constant bending and replenishing. 

When the lady of the well-appointed kitchen turned her hand to

the fancy dishes that made her reputation, it is likely that she

moved away from the raging flames to a nearby brazier. 

These more easily controlled “stoves” were often

self-contained cooking units, each with its own chamber for coals,

and over which a small pan rested on gratings

or prongs.  The heat it produced was clearly mild, and its place

on the kitchen table, or sometimes at waist height on its own stand,

was far more comfortable-work height.  Some appear to have been

made just to hold the coals themselves, while others included the

suspended pan.

Recipes that called for braziers,

chafing dishes, or even “a dish of coles” [sic] were

often required in early cooking manuscripts, whether in the private

recipe collections or in household libraries of the privileged. 

The foods themselves could have been sweet or savory: For example, a

seventeenth and eighteenth century Welsh Rabbit used one to melt the

cheese mixture; the slow gentle heat also benefited stews and

fricassee’s.  In a dish called “French Pottage,”

sippets (toast triangles) were softened in warmed wine just before

the final presentation.  And when candying violets or burrage

blossoms they were indispensable.  Thus is little wonder that

chafing dishes were listed as the more valuable cookery possessions

in wills or estate inventories (where they were assessed for

inheritance taxes after the death of the head of household) In 1642

Henry Roffe, Ipswich, Massachusetts, directed that “If

any of my children dye then that porcon shalbe equally divided

betweene my wife & the rest of my children I doe give unto my

wife one great brasse pott and one great brasse pann, and a great

brasse posnett and a chafing dish and five pewter platters.”

And when he subsequently died, his inventory listed the chafing dish

and a posnet (saucepan)

together as worth 5 shillings. 

Chafing

dishes and braziers

were made of a thin metal, often brass or copper, spun or pressed or

hammered; the pots suspended over them were similarly constructed for

lightweight and so as to permit sensitive heat transmission. 

The “dish of coles,” closely related, was more often used

as a drying implement.  A few coals, or embers, were held under

the upper chamber, which was more enclosed, boxy, and suited to slow

dehydration of dried fruits or candied flowers...“to

candy flowers in theyr naturall culler,  “set them A

drying in a sive, set in an oven,” or

when candying violets, “then put in a

box & keep them to dry in a stove.” 

Their integral place in early American cookery is revealed by Amelia

Simmons (1796) who used one to preserve strawberries.  As may be

evident, these chafing dishes, braziers,

and dishes of coals were always used in the kitchen, were considered

to be pots, and were not appropriate at the dining table. Their high

position was derived from the fact that the ingredients were costly

(especially the sugar, perhaps imported wines), that they required

exceptional skill that one might expect in an ordinary farm family or

from a hired kitchen girl, and that they frequently prepared and

preserved dishes that could not easily be found or eaten out of

season.

However, the growth of cities changed this, and by the

end of the nineteenth century, chafing dishes took on a new cast. 

The cook stove had made it possible to work at waist height over

gentle heat by simply sliding the pot to the far end of the stovetop,

away from the firebox area underneath.  But now the glowing

coals of earlier chafing dishes were replaced by small alcohol

burners under the pan, sometimes wickless, but sometimes with wicks

that could be adjusted to vary the temperature.  Some rigs

offered the use of a pan of water underneath the cooking compartment,

a la bain

marie; these could not only cook

very gently but also kept food warm on a sideboard or buffet.

Late nineteenth-century urban middle class women now had

more time and interest in delicacies, and the price of sugar had

dropped considerably.  With more leisure they entertained more,

often with luncheons, teas, and suppers.  No longer an exotic

adjunct of the hearth, the chafing dish reverted to the ancient role

of charming one’s guests by displaying expertise and offering

flattering, personalized efforts.        

A new genre of cookbooks devoted to the chafing dish was

now published, some promotional in nature and distributed by the

manufacturers of elaborate silver sets or their copies in copper,

nickel, and brass. Others were written by trendy cookbook authors on

the cutting edge of table fashion.  Together they guided

newcomers to the urban middle class, instructing them on how to use

the new equipment in the light and dainty cuisine just then finding

favor in new social rituals.  And thus were developed such new

recipes as cherries jubilee, deviled eggs, creamed salmon or chicken,

or kidneys in mushrooms and wine.

In the midst of meat-and-potatoes home cooking now rose

a group of cookbooks that clearly connected chafing dish specialties,

other dainty innovations of the time (salads, finger sandwiches,

sweets and relishes), and new meal patterns (teas, luncheons,

suppers).  Just look at the titles and their dates, keeping in

mind that no such cooking had previously existed.

•           

1890;  [anonymous] On

the Chafing Dish, A Word for Sunday Night Teas

offered a selection of savory dishes that could be put together

easily and served graciously at the table. The author noted that

“The few receipts for the chafing Dish

I have found successful in making the informal Sunday night tea a

meal much to be desired.  All of them are dishes simply and

easily prepared by the    housekeeper herself- or

himself.”  Its “Epilogue”added

salad choices. 

•          

1900;         

[ca.].  Christine Terhune Herrick, The

Chafing Dish Supper.

•          

1902;         

Fannie Merritt Farmer, Chafing Dish

Possibilities.  Included some history

of the utensil, and non-chafing dish preparations such as

fashionable sweets, relishes, and candies.

•          

1905;         

Frank Scholesser, The Cult of the Chafing

Dish.

•          

1906;         

Chef  Louis Muckensturm, Louis’ Salads & Chafing

Dishes.

•          

1912;         

Alice L James, The Chafing Dish, Together

With Directions For The Preparation of Sandwiches.

•          

1912;          

Mrs. S. T. Rorer, How To Use a Chafing Dish.

•          

1912; Gesine Lemcke, Chafing

Dish Recipes: included salads, canapes,

sweet desserts and chafing dish luncheon menus.

•          

1913;         

A. C. Hoff, The Chafing Dish Specialties.

A similar series of works had been targeted specially at

bachelors, the bon vivants who might be found “In

Clubs, Yachting Circles, Army and Navy, and The Dreams of Fair

Women—Heaven Bless Ém ” 

(Deshler Welch, The Bachelor and The

Chafing Dish, 1896).

And so on.

Needless to say, such an audience sought the equipment

necessary to make the right impression.  In 1892, the Jewett

Chafing Dish promotions portrayed a decorative utensil available in

silver plate, nickel plate, or polished copper.  It burned

alcohol, and boasted that it had no “wick

to get out of order.”  Four years

later, the Gorham Manufacturing Company used the standard cookbook

format, filled with illustrations, as a catalog of enticing designs.

In 1906, Sternau’s small promotional booklet of

chafing dish recipes described a more complicated set of equipment. 

It declared that “the Sterno-Inferno

Burner, which is the most important adjunct of all, is really a part

of the Chafing Dish.”  The

complete set included a special spoon, fork, skimmer,

egg

poacher, toaster, omelet or chop

dish, chafing-dish tray, and covered flagon (for wine, cream,

etc.).         

And finally, the chafing dish made its way into popular

culture, a sure sign that it was well known, in the traditional song,

The Eddystone Light:

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light And he slept

with a mermaid one fine night Out of this union there came three A

porpoise and a porgy and the other was me! Yo ho ho, the wind

blows free, Oh for the life on the rolling sea!

One night, as I was a-trimming the glim Singing a verse from

the evening hymn I head a voice cry out an “Ahoy!” And

there was my mother, sitting on a buoy. Yo ho ho, the wind blows

free, Oh for the life on the rolling sea!

“Oh, what

has become of my children three?” My mother then inquired

of me. One’s on exhibit as a talking fish The other was

served in a chafing dish. Yo ho ho, the wind blows free, Oh

for the life on the rolling sea!

And onward through the twentieth century, the chafing

dish conferred status and importance on a meal, and continued to be,

in one form or another (think fondue

pots), one of the standard

“important” gifts at middle-class weddings.  

This

article was republished with the permission of the author –

Alice Ross. Alice Ross brings 25 years as a dedicated food

professional teacher, writer, researcher and collector to her Hearth

Studios, at which she teaches workshops in various aspects of hearth,

woodstove and brick oven cookery. She has served as consultant in

historical food for such noted museums as Virginia’s Colonial

Williamsburg and The Lowell National Historical Park in

Massachusetts. Ross wrote her doctoral dissertation in food history

at the State University at Stony Brook. Currently, she is involved in

a major kitchen report on Rock Hall Museum, a 1770’s Georgian

mansion on Long Island. Her web site is www.aliceross.com