Posted by Ed Kiser on December 04, 2006 at 19:15:13 from 152.163.101.7 user Kisered.
In WH, CH1, there is the surprise of reading how Mrs. Dixon is cooking the bacon:
Mrs. Dixon had their
breakfast ready for them,
two bowls of hot porridge
on the kitchen table,
that was covered with a
red-and-white chequered
table-cloth, and some
rashers of bacon sizzling
in the frying-pan
that she was holding over
the fire.
She was NOT cooking with that frying-pan ON the stove, but IN HER HAND over an open flame.
Now this is in a kitchen, where Mrs. Dixon has achieved some degree of cooling fame, as her meat pies appear to be well known. One would think that somehow in that kitchen, which should be rather well equipped for that day and age, that she would not have to HOLD that pan while the bacon fried.
Her hand holding that pan does not make her kitchen (for frying purposes anyway) that much more advanced that what Dot had to do cooking in the fireplace of the Dogs' Home in PM.
Is this the traditional way of frying bacon, with a HAND-HELD frying-pan (for those days in the early thirties) or is this just showing how poorly equipped her kitchen really is? Such a mode of cooking bacon is not all that easy, being a strain on the wrist. Cannot use two hands, because one is busy flipping over the bacon as it cooks while leaving only one hand to grip that pan handle.
Could it be that although she could have put that pan ON TOP of the stove, that she PREFERRED to hand hold it? Egad...
Ed Kiser, Kentucky