Even toasting-forks, and similar frail utensils of wire or wrought iron, stood on tall, spindling legs, or were carefully shaped to be set up on trivets. They usually had, also, long, adjustable handles, which helped to make endurable the blazing heat of the great logs. All such irons as waffle-irons had far longer handles than are seen on any cooking-utensils in these days of stoves and ranges, where the flames are covered and the housewife shielded. Gridirons had long handles of wood or iron, which could be fastened to the shorter stationary handles. The two gridirons in the accompanying illustration are a century old. The circular one was the oldest form. The oblong ones, with groove to collect the gravy, did not vary in shape till our own day. Both have indications of fittings for long handles, but the handles have vanished. A long-handled frying-pan is seen hanging by the side of the slave-kitchen fireplace.
An accompaniment of the kitchen fireplace, found, not in farmhouses, but among luxury-loving town-folk, was the plate-warmer. They are seldom named in inventories, and I know of but one of Revolutionary days, and it is here shown. Similar ones are manufactured to-day; the legs, perhaps, are shorter, but the general outline is the same.
An important furnishing of every fireplace was the andirons. In kitchen fireplaces these were usually of iron, and the shape known as goose-neck were common. Cob irons were the simplest form, and merely supported the spit; sometimes they had hooks to hold a dripping-pan. A common name for the kitchen andirons was fire-dogs; and creepers were low, small andirons, usually used with the tall fire-dogs. The kitchen andirons were simply for use to help hold the logs and cooking-utensils. But other fireplaces had handsome fire-dogs of copper, brass, or cut steel, cast or wrought in handsome devices. These were a pride and delight to the housewife.
A primitive method of roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was by suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a peg in the ceiling, while some one--usually an unwilling child--occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole turnspit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave the string a good twist, and thereafter it would untwist, and then twist a little again, and so on until the vibration ceased, when she again basted and started it. As the juices sometimes ran down in the roast and left the upper part too dry, a "double string-roaster" was invented, by which the equilibrium of the joint could be shifted. A jack was a convenient and magnified edition of the primitive string, being a metal suspensory machine. A still further glorification was the addition of a revolving power which ran by clockwork and turned the roast with regularity; this was known as a clock-jack. The one here shown hangs in the fireplace in Deerfield Memorial Hall. A smoke-jack was run somewhat irregularly by the pressure of smoke and the current of hot air in the chimney. These were noisy and creaking and not regarded with favor by old-fashioned cooks.
