Chafing dishes are Synonymous with Luxury

The extravagant banquets of ancient Greece and Rome depended on them for drama at the table; the ruins of Pompeii show the evidence of their status.  Some of their aura rose from their association with the noble host, himself preparing a delicacy for the entertainment and delectation of his honored guests, as he proved, at the same time, his cultural sophistication and wealth.  With the passage of centuries, very little has changed.  Copper, silver, bronze, and iron, valuable metals in their early development, continued in use even as they became more common, because they worked so well.  And so to this day, the erudite mistress of the dining table may tote out her best fondue service (an adapted chafing dish, after all) and impress her guests with both her savvy and her expensive, fine imported chocolate.

Chafing dishes, often connected to elegant entertaining, have also remained in the batteries de cuisine because they worked so well.  During all those centuries of cooking near raging fire, it was a major challenge to maintain a low gentle heat.  Certainly there was no knob with which to turn down the fire, and even small piles of coals on the hearth required constant bending and replenishing.  When the lady of the well-appointed kitchen turned her hand to the fancy dishes that made her reputation, it is likely that she moved away from the raging flames to a nearby brazier.  These more easily controlled “stoves” were often self-contained cooking units, each with its own chamber for coals, and over which a small pan rested on gratings or prongs.  The heat it produced was clearly mild, and its place on the kitchen table, or sometimes at waist height on its own stand, was far more comfortable-work height.  Some appear to have been made just to hold the coals themselves, while others included the suspended pan.

Recipes that called for braziers, chafing dishes, or even “a dish of coles” [sic] were often required in early cooking manuscripts, whether in the private recipe collections or in household libraries of the privileged.  The foods themselves could have been sweet or savory: For example, a seventeenth and eighteenth century Welsh Rabbit used one to melt the cheese mixture; the slow gentle heat also benefited stews and fricassee’s.  In a dish called “French Pottage,” sippets (toast triangles) were softened in warmed wine just before the final presentation.  And when candying violets or burrage blossoms they were indispensable.  Thus is little wonder that chafing dishes were listed as the more valuable cookery possessions in wills or estate inventories (where they were assessed for inheritance taxes after the death of the head of household) In 1642 Henry Roffe, Ipswich, Massachusetts, directed that “If any of my children dye then that porcon shalbe equally divided betweene my wife & the rest of my children I doe give unto my wife one great brasse pott and one great brasse pann, and a great brasse posnett and a chafing dish and five pewter platters.” And when he subsequently died, his inventory listed the chafing dish and a posnet (saucepan) together as worth 5 shillings. 

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