7 ms·

I was hoping this was going to talk about the increasingly trendy open kitchen concept in homes, or more specifically answer the question: why have kitchens tra

I was hoping this was going to talk about the increasingly trendy open kitchen concept in homes, or more specifically answer the question: why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? Unfortunately, the article is about restaurants.

ip26 3y ago
why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? Not long ago, cooking was often done exclusively by “the help”.
- ghaff 3y ago
  We didn't have "help" growing up but when there was a dinner party, there was still the idea that you had the dining room and that all the food prep/cleanup happened out of sight in a different room. You certainly didn't have mingling of guests and food prep/delivery. This wasn't really upper class but it was influenced by British norms, albeit in the US, even if there weren't servants involved.
- randomdata 3y ago
  The cooking is still exclusively done by "the help" in restaurants, but the article indicates that the theatre, so to speak, of food preparation has come to be considered a desirable trait by those occupying the dining room. So this doesn't quite answer why they settled on keeping it hidden instead of a display of entertainment. There is no reason to think people in that time wouldn't have found the same enjoyment in watching the food get made. Most likely the answer is that it's just what one notable person happened to decide, by random chance, to do with his kitchen arrangement, and everyone else copied it in hopes that it would make them equally notable. Pretty much all human behaviour can be explained that way.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Even now many restaurants don't "show the sausage being made" because they're not that type of presentation. And even the ones that do have a theatre of sorts have background preparation and dish-washing that nobody wants to see.
  - toyg 3y ago
    > it's just what one notable person happened to decide Oh no. Chances are the real engine of this change is the recent mass-media discovery of food-prep as a heroic and cool activity. Celebrity chefs used to be obnoxious, "always-be-prepared", by-the-book home-goddess archetypes like Delia Smith; at some point over the last 25 years, they turned into sexy, improvising, creative rockstars. The creativity-impoverished masses, bored to death by day after day looking at computer screens, now get their kicks by eating and cooking.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      You are quite right that another notable person came along and, to buck the trend, decided it would be entertaining to watch "the help", and then the rest started to follow thinking that must be what is required to become notable. But it could have gone the other way. The first notable person could have recognized the entertainment, and the later notable person could have decided it was better to keep hidden. We don't know why the first one decided to go with hidden, and likely it was just a random choice.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [dead]
- nawitus 3y ago
  Counterpoint: kitchens were separate also in countries where the cooking was not commonly done by "the help".
d__a__n__g 3y ago
[flagged]
HankB99 3y ago
Further, whenever we had guests, we all tended to congregate in the kitchen anyway.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
Homes were smaller in the old days.
et-al 3y ago
> why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? You ever fry fish or saute a dish with a lot of garlic? That's why. Sure, powerful vent hoods, but not everyone has that luxury.
seanthemon 3y ago
History: greeks and romans traditionally had separated kitchens from homes due yo the use of hearths. Another aspect was fire. Kitchens used wattle chimneys which were super flammable, so it was placed as far away from the main home as possible - also kitchens were a lot noisier.
paulddraper 3y ago
> why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas Because my mother would die if guests saw her stack of dirty dishes next to the sink.
m463 3y ago
This is a wonderful trend. Cooking goes on, mixed with kids homework or peers socializing, and it pulls everyone together. Another nice trend is street level shops and restaurants mixed with housing above. This fights the "estate for everyone" mcmansion trend that separates people.
- Swizec 3y ago
  > Another nice trend is street level shops and restaurants mixed with housing above FYI this is how most non-american towns and cities have been designed for … ever? Go into any European old town center and it’s full of street level shops with residential on the floors above. Judging from popular photos, much of Asia and Africa are like this as well.
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    I think detached houses with yards are better.
    - Swizec 3y ago
      Nah detached houses with yards are the worst of both worlds. You get neither the easily accessible town/city experience nor enough land to do anything interesting with. But I’m probably biased because I grew up in a city and regularly visited grandparents with legit farms. If you’re gonna have land, it should support at least a decent-sized garden … maybe a few fruit trees, nice shed, couple chickens. You definitely don’t want a yard that’s spitting distance to your neighbors’ house, that’s just silly.
      - osigurdson 3y ago
        Acreages are better still, I agree.
      - balfirevic 3y ago
        > You definitely don’t want a yard that’s spitting distance to your neighbors’ house, that’s just silly. I don't care about having land (nor yard - I especially don't want to take care of one), but detached house is the only way to have loud and/or space intensive hobbies (playing music with drums, karaoke, machine shop). Invent magic sound-isolating material and I'd prefer large flats in buildings, for easy access to everything.
sdm 3y ago
> why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? Smell. To keep the smells of cooking from overwhelming the rest of the house. In the process of building a new house and it will be a separate kitchen. Well, technically, a wet kitchen that is closed off and a small dry kitchen connected to the dining area for dealing with things that aren't strong smelling. This setup is pretty standard in here in Asia.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Having lived in multiple apartments and now back into a house I am amazed that US apartments (at least the ones where I lived) did not have a range hood that blew stuff to the outside. All they did was recirculate air through a grease filter. In other words, useless. Now back in a house with a connection to the outside. Actually does something. Although I try to cook outside, because cooking inside means I have to pay for more AC.
bombcar 3y ago
Many good reasons below - but another one is that framing large rooms is (was) expensive until pretty close to modern times with laminated beams, etc. So you'd want to make as many smaller rooms as you could already just for cost reasons, and so making everything a separate room followed pretty closely. Now, for the poorer people (majority?) they'd have similar sized rooms, just fewer - and the kitchen would often double as a dining room (and the living room might double as a formal dining room, if present). I find I much prefer "openable concept" than open concept - large sliding doors to the kitchen, perhaps, or a drop down under a hutch onto a breakfast bar, so you can close the kitchen off from the rest of the house if you want.
- prawn 3y ago
  Also easier to heat or cool smaller spaces. In the case of a kitchen, you can isolate and exhaust heat.
  - mantas 3y ago
    In my parts of the world it was the opposite. Kitchen and living room was traditionally joint. To use kitchen heat in winter to heat up the living area. Usually people would also sleep in the same room during winter.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      There were much more region variations on house styles before HVAC conquered everything and Nate it irrelevant. Modern energy saving building is often reverting to pre-A/C designs - of which one of the tricks is various rooms of various sizes for different times of the day.
- mantas 3y ago
  I doubt bigger rooms was hard to build. Here in north-east Europe traditional wooden houses were essentially 2 big rooms on either side. With entrance and storage in the middle. One side was kitchen and living room while the other was „cold“ and usually not used much during the winter.
osigurdson 3y ago
It is probably hard to find a house with a separate kitchen these days. M
mantas 3y ago
Same here! Talking about traditional setup… It probably varies from place to place? Here in north-east europe traditional peasant setup was kitchen and living room together. Kitchen stove was used to heat the house as well. Usually houses would have cold side and warm side. Warm side was warmed up while cooking. People would also sleep in the warm side during the winter. It only started to change in 20th century with people moving to apartments or building fancier houses en masse. However by the end of 20th century people were already gravitating back to the usual setup of joint kitchen and living room. Which is the norm in new buildings for the past 20 years or so.

ip26 3y ago

why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? Not long ago, cooking was often done exclusively by “the help”.

ghaff 3y ago
We didn't have "help" growing up but when there was a dinner party, there was still the idea that you had the dining room and that all the food prep/cleanup happened out of sight in a different room. You certainly didn't have mingling of guests and food prep/delivery. This wasn't really upper class but it was influenced by British norms, albeit in the US, even if there weren't servants involved.
randomdata 3y ago
The cooking is still exclusively done by "the help" in restaurants, but the article indicates that the theatre, so to speak, of food preparation has come to be considered a desirable trait by those occupying the dining room. So this doesn't quite answer why they settled on keeping it hidden instead of a display of entertainment. There is no reason to think people in that time wouldn't have found the same enjoyment in watching the food get made. Most likely the answer is that it's just what one notable person happened to decide, by random chance, to do with his kitchen arrangement, and everyone else copied it in hopes that it would make them equally notable. Pretty much all human behaviour can be explained that way.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Even now many restaurants don't "show the sausage being made" because they're not that type of presentation. And even the ones that do have a theatre of sorts have background preparation and dish-washing that nobody wants to see.
- toyg 3y ago
  > it's just what one notable person happened to decide Oh no. Chances are the real engine of this change is the recent mass-media discovery of food-prep as a heroic and cool activity. Celebrity chefs used to be obnoxious, "always-be-prepared", by-the-book home-goddess archetypes like Delia Smith; at some point over the last 25 years, they turned into sexy, improvising, creative rockstars. The creativity-impoverished masses, bored to death by day after day looking at computer screens, now get their kicks by eating and cooking.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    You are quite right that another notable person came along and, to buck the trend, decided it would be entertaining to watch "the help", and then the rest started to follow thinking that must be what is required to become notable. But it could have gone the other way. The first notable person could have recognized the entertainment, and the later notable person could have decided it was better to keep hidden. We don't know why the first one decided to go with hidden, and likely it was just a random choice.
sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]
nawitus 3y ago
Counterpoint: kitchens were separate also in countries where the cooking was not commonly done by "the help".

d__a__n__g 3y ago

[flagged]

HankB99 3y ago

Further, whenever we had guests, we all tended to congregate in the kitchen anyway.

mixmastamyk 3y ago

Homes were smaller in the old days.

et-al 3y ago

> why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? You ever fry fish or saute a dish with a lot of garlic? That's why. Sure, powerful vent hoods, but not everyone has that luxury.

seanthemon 3y ago

History: greeks and romans traditionally had separated kitchens from homes due yo the use of hearths. Another aspect was fire. Kitchens used wattle chimneys which were super flammable, so it was placed as far away from the main home as possible - also kitchens were a lot noisier.

paulddraper 3y ago

> why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas Because my mother would die if guests saw her stack of dirty dishes next to the sink.

m463 3y ago

This is a wonderful trend. Cooking goes on, mixed with kids homework or peers socializing, and it pulls everyone together. Another nice trend is street level shops and restaurants mixed with housing above. This fights the "estate for everyone" mcmansion trend that separates people.

Swizec 3y ago
> Another nice trend is street level shops and restaurants mixed with housing above FYI this is how most non-american towns and cities have been designed for … ever? Go into any European old town center and it’s full of street level shops with residential on the floors above. Judging from popular photos, much of Asia and Africa are like this as well.
- osigurdson 3y ago
  I think detached houses with yards are better.
  - Swizec 3y ago
    Nah detached houses with yards are the worst of both worlds. You get neither the easily accessible town/city experience nor enough land to do anything interesting with. But I’m probably biased because I grew up in a city and regularly visited grandparents with legit farms. If you’re gonna have land, it should support at least a decent-sized garden … maybe a few fruit trees, nice shed, couple chickens. You definitely don’t want a yard that’s spitting distance to your neighbors’ house, that’s just silly.
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      Acreages are better still, I agree.
    - balfirevic 3y ago
      > You definitely don’t want a yard that’s spitting distance to your neighbors’ house, that’s just silly. I don't care about having land (nor yard - I especially don't want to take care of one), but detached house is the only way to have loud and/or space intensive hobbies (playing music with drums, karaoke, machine shop). Invent magic sound-isolating material and I'd prefer large flats in buildings, for easy access to everything.

sdm 3y ago

> why have kitchens traditionally been separated from dining areas in the first place? Smell. To keep the smells of cooking from overwhelming the rest of the house. In the process of building a new house and it will be a separate kitchen. Well, technically, a wet kitchen that is closed off and a small dry kitchen connected to the dining area for dealing with things that aren't strong smelling. This setup is pretty standard in here in Asia.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Having lived in multiple apartments and now back into a house I am amazed that US apartments (at least the ones where I lived) did not have a range hood that blew stuff to the outside. All they did was recirculate air through a grease filter. In other words, useless. Now back in a house with a connection to the outside. Actually does something. Although I try to cook outside, because cooking inside means I have to pay for more AC.

bombcar 3y ago

Many good reasons below - but another one is that framing large rooms is (was) expensive until pretty close to modern times with laminated beams, etc. So you'd want to make as many smaller rooms as you could already just for cost reasons, and so making everything a separate room followed pretty closely. Now, for the poorer people (majority?) they'd have similar sized rooms, just fewer - and the kitchen would often double as a dining room (and the living room might double as a formal dining room, if present). I find I much prefer "openable concept" than open concept - large sliding doors to the kitchen, perhaps, or a drop down under a hutch onto a breakfast bar, so you can close the kitchen off from the rest of the house if you want.

prawn 3y ago
Also easier to heat or cool smaller spaces. In the case of a kitchen, you can isolate and exhaust heat.
- mantas 3y ago
  In my parts of the world it was the opposite. Kitchen and living room was traditionally joint. To use kitchen heat in winter to heat up the living area. Usually people would also sleep in the same room during winter.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    There were much more region variations on house styles before HVAC conquered everything and Nate it irrelevant. Modern energy saving building is often reverting to pre-A/C designs - of which one of the tricks is various rooms of various sizes for different times of the day.
mantas 3y ago
I doubt bigger rooms was hard to build. Here in north-east Europe traditional wooden houses were essentially 2 big rooms on either side. With entrance and storage in the middle. One side was kitchen and living room while the other was „cold“ and usually not used much during the winter.

osigurdson 3y ago

It is probably hard to find a house with a separate kitchen these days. M

mantas 3y ago

Same here! Talking about traditional setup… It probably varies from place to place? Here in north-east europe traditional peasant setup was kitchen and living room together. Kitchen stove was used to heat the house as well. Usually houses would have cold side and warm side. Warm side was warmed up while cooking. People would also sleep in the warm side during the winter. It only started to change in 20th century with people moving to apartments or building fancier houses en masse. However by the end of 20th century people were already gravitating back to the usual setup of joint kitchen and living room. Which is the norm in new buildings for the past 20 years or so.