Still room

Historical Evolution of Still Rooms:
– Medieval use: Vital for teaching practical skills, food preservation, perfume making, and recipe collections.
– Renaissance use: Distillation equipment for spirits, wines, perfumes, and recipe innovation.
– Later uses: Transition to making preserves, jellies, canned foods, chutneys, teas, and store rooms for perishables.

Commercial Still Rooms:
– Role as an annexe to public commercial kitchens in hotels and restaurants.
– Features include water boiler, coffee brewers, and storage for crockery, tea pots, and coffee pots.

Resources and References:
– Notable historical cookbooks like ‘The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy’ (1747) and ‘Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management’ (1861).
– Scholarly references on medieval women, medical recipes, and remedies.

Still Rooms in Historic Places:
– Locations like the Charles Dickens Museum, Craigside House, Kentwell Hall, Tatton Hall, and Tredegar House.

Still Room Practices and Servants in English Households:
– Practices include preparation of home remedies, oils, jams, herbal waters, teas, colognes, and production of beers, cakes, pastries.
– Insights on female servants’ roles, challenges faced, and historical context on English household staff.

Still room (Wikipedia)

The still room is a room for preparing household compounds, found in most great houses, castles or large establishments throughout Europe, dating back at least to medieval times. Stillrooms were used to make products as varied as candles, furniture polish, and soap; distillery was only one of the tasks carried out there.

The still room was a working room, part chemistry lab, part compounding pharmacy, part perfumery, part beverage factory, and part kitchen. Professional manufacturers such as dispensing chemists and apothecaries gradually took over many still-room tasks, producing the products of the still-room commercially. Its use for food preservation also declined with the commercialization of preserved food.