Posted by Mike Field on April 30, 2001 at 06:52:52 from 203.26.98.4:
In Reply to: LARDER or PANTRY posted by Ed Kiser on April 30, 2001 at 05:03:14:
....so let me have first go this time. (But you understand that I'm speaking as an Aussie, where the different climate has produced some different outcomes despite the common and recent shared heritage.)
Firstly, I think that since the advent of refrigerators and the demise of servants, the terms larder and pantry have become more-or-less interchangeable. Before this, though, I think a larder was a place for storing food while a pantry was for storing cooking/serving appurtunances. It was the place where the crockery was kept, the silver cleaned, and the accounts made up.
Out here, we never used the word "larder," at least in my time. On the other hand, we always used "pantry," even though the ice-box or refrigerator was kept elsewhere, and the pantry was for the storage of food. Silver was kept in side-boards or dressers -- kitchen cutlery in the kitchen, silverware in the dining-room. (Our pantry also contained a small cellar for use as a cool-room, by the way, but I guess that's another story. That certainly wasn't universal.)
Well, that's my understanding. But I hope someone from the older generation of English readers will have a say, too.
As a rider to all this, although I can't remember if Ransome mentions it anywhere, there was also a room called a "back kitchen," separate to the kitchen that was included as part of the house. It was a room that was either a separate building altogether, or that, being attached to the house, nevertheless had only an outside entrance. The back kitchen was where meat was smoked, and so on.
And in the same way, the dairy (mentioned in a few places) was where milk was stored, cream was separated, butter was churned, and so on. Structurally, it was (I think) the same as the back kitchen.
We had both back kitchens and dairies here in the early days, and in fact dairies are still quite common on farms where a milking cow is kept, although back kitchens are long gone.