Pennsylvania Dutch Kitchen, History

These Pennsylvanian Deutsch communities were largely farmers, with seasonality and self-sufficiency at the crux of their daily life. The kitchen was not only where the meals were cooked, but a working space equal to the land. Here, butter would be churned by hand, vegetables harvested and prepped for drying, salting, smoking, and pickling, as well as dough kneaded in great bulk to supply the large families typically associated with farming communities.

Mrs. Fisher researched into the history behind  each room that would come to complete the dollhouse, collecting articles and pictures for each movement in her Scrapbook 1 and Scrapbook 2, along with personal mentions of her work in various newspapers.

For the Pennsylvanian Dutch kitchen's research, one Life article explains:

"In the main fireplace, the wife did her cooking, using a built-in oven and a variety of utensils. At first she hung pots in the fire from a green wood lug pole running crosswise above the hearth. Such poles often charred through and spilled the soup, so trammel rods and swinging iron cranes were substituted. In the 1740s Benjamin Franklin invented a new apparatus which was to end the need for fireplaces and led eventually to the American kitchen stove. This, in turn, changed American diet: biscuits, muffins, corn pone and flapjacks all came in when the stove's quick heat replaced slow-baking masonry" (Life, pp. 123, 1955 April 18). 

The hearth was the focal point of these spaces, as it is in Mrs. Fisher’s model. Her recreation included a work bench with various pots boiling in the hearth and iron racks on which they suspended their pots over a flame.