Interesting Information About Today's Kitchen

By Matthew Kerridge

The gradual and steady improvement of the kitchen down through the centuries would certainly serve to impress people if they cared to learn a bit about this completely ubiquitous room in almost any home today. From the first open campfire where foods were prepared to the room we now know, many developments in design and technology can also be laid at the feet of engineers who sought to improve workflow.

Throughout much of human history, what we think of as the kitchen consisted of not much more than an open fire and a few implements and tools to cook food over it. For sure, wealthy ancient Greeks and Romans quite often had separate rooms in which an open fire was kept and food was cooked on but most people tended to not even have what could be considered a rudimentary kitchen.

The common folk, instead, were more focused on procuring the pots, pans and utensils in which food could be prepared over a campfire rather than obtaining a room in whatever home they had. The first attempt at bringing kitchens to the masses was undertaken by the ancient Romans, who built large kitchens open to the public where food could be prepared by one and all.

This lack of a separate room in a home was pretty much a fact of life for much of society outside of the wealthy classes throughout most of human history. Colonial Americans living in log cabins out on the frontier first began to look at their cabins with an eye towards marking off a separate area where food could be prepared. It was usually an area next to the fireplace.

Truthfully, improvements in kitchens down through the centuries since are largely the result of concurrent improvements in the design and manufacture of ranges and cook stoves. Innovations in manufacturing meant that stoves were more common which also meant that kitchens were more possible. Additionally, the availability of indoor plumbing for running water also made the kitchen more possible.

Like much of everything that has developed over the last few centuries, improvement in mass production as a result of the Industrial Revolution, led to the increasing ubiquity and low cost of stoves and refrigerators and other kitchen appliances. This made it possible for even the middle and lower classes to devote an entire room to the task of preparing of foods.

Many people may not realize it, but a modern kitchen today is a direct result of the efforts undertaken by industrial design engineers and industrial engineers to take work processes and streamline them so that they became more efficient. Engineers look at a woman's home and design the kitchen that was efficient enough so that she could spend less time in it and more time back on the factory floor.

Indeed, the improvement in the ability to bring electricity, indoor plumbing and other now-commonplace technological developments led to the rise of the kitchen throughout the 20th century to what it has become today, when even the smallest and least expensive of apartments or homes may have an extensive room dedicated strictly for the preparing of foods. - 33383

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