The houses in Ancient Greece were commonly of the atrium-type: the rooms
were arranged around a central courtyard for women. In many such homes,
a covered but otherwise open patio served as the kitchen. Homes of the
wealthy had the kitchen as a separate room, usually next to a bathroom
(so that both rooms could be heated by the kitchen fire), both rooms
being accessible from the court. In such houses, there was often a
separate small storage room in the back of the kitchen used for storing
food and kitchen utensils.
Kitchen with stove and oven of a Roman inn (Mansio) at the Roman villa of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany.
In the Roman Empire, common folk in cities often had no kitchen of their
own; they did their cooking in large public kitchens. Some had small
mobile bronze stoves, on which a fire could be lit for cooking. Wealthy
Romans had relatively well-equipped kitchens. In a Roman villa, the
kitchen was typically integrated into the main building as a separate
room, set apart for practical reasons of smoke and sociological reasons
of the kitchen being operated by slaves. The fireplace was typically on
the floor, placed at a wall—sometimes raised a little bit—such that one
had to kneel to cook. There were no chimneys.
Early medieval European longhouses had an open fire under the highest
point of the building. The "kitchen area" was between the entrance and
the fireplace. In wealthy homes there was typically more than one
kitchen. In some homes there were upwards of three kitchens. The
kitchens were divided based on the types of food prepared in them.[1] In
place of a chimney, these early buildings had a hole in the roof
through which some of the smoke could escape. Besides cooking, the fire
also served as a source of heat and light to the single-room building. A
similar design can be found in the Iroquois longhouses of North
America.
In the larger homesteads of European nobles, the kitchen was sometimes
in a separate sunken floor building to keep the main building, which
served social and official purposes, free from indoor smoke.
The first known stoves in Japan date from about the same time. The
earliest findings are from the Kofun period (3rd to 6th century). These
stoves, called kamado, were typically made of clay and mortar; they were
fired with wood or charcoal through a hole in the front and had a hole
in the top, into which a pot could be hanged by its rim. This type of
stove remained in use for centuries to come, with only minor
modifications. Like in Europe, the wealthier homes had a separate
building which served for cooking. A kind of open fire pit fired with
charcoal, called irori, remained in use as the secondary stove in most
homes until the Edo period (17th to 19th century). A kamado was used to
cook the staple food, for instance rice, while irori served both to cook
side dishes and as a heat source.
The kitchen remained largely unaffected by architectural advances
throughout the Middle Ages; open fire remained the only method of
heating food. European medieval kitchens were dark, smoky, and sooty
places, whence their name "smoke kitchen". In European medieval cities
around the 10th to 12th centuries, the kitchen still used an open fire
hearth in the middle of the room. In wealthy homes, the ground floor was
often used as a stable while the kitchen was located on the floor
above, like the bedroom and the hall. In castles and monasteries, the
living and working areas were separated; the kitchen was sometimes moved
to a separate building, and thus could not serve anymore to heat the
living rooms. In some castles the kitchen was retained in the same
structure, but servants were strictly separated from nobles, by
constructing separate spiral stone staircases for use of servants to
bring food to upper levels. An extant example of such a medieval kitchen
with servants' staircase is at Muchalls Castle in Scotland. In Japanese
homes, the kitchen started to become a separate room within the main
building at that time.
With the advent of the chimney, the hearth moved from the center of the
room to one wall, and the first brick-and-mortar hearths were built. The
fire was lit on top of the construction; a vault underneath served to
store wood. Pots made of iron, bronze, or copper started to replace the
pottery used earlier. The temperature was controlled by hanging the pot
higher or lower over the fire, or placing it on a trivet or directly on
the hot ashes. Using open fire for cooking (and heating) was risky;
fires devastating whole cities occurred frequently.
