Pantry - History in Europe and United States

History in Europe and United States

In a late medieval hall, there were separate rooms for the various service functions and food storage. A pantry was where bread was kept and food preparation associated with it done. The head of the office responsible for this room was referred to as a pantler. There were similar rooms for storage of bacon and other meats (larder), alcoholic beverages (buttery) known for the "butts" of barrels stored there, and cooking (kitchen).

By the Victorian era, large houses and estates in Britain maintained the use of separate rooms, each one dedicated to a distinct stage of food preparation and clean up. The kitchen was for cooking, while food storage was done in a storeroom. Food preparation before cooking was done in a larder, and dishwashing was done in a scullery or pantry, "depending on the type of dish and level of dirt". Since the scullery was the room with running water, it had a sink, and it was where the messiest food preparation took place, such as cleaning fish and cutting raw meat. The pantry was where tableware was stored, such as china, glassware and silverware. If the pantry had a sink for washing tableware, it was a wooden sink lined with lead, to prevent chipping the china and glassware while they were washed. In some middle-class houses, the larder, pantry and storeroom might simply be large wooden cupboards, each with its exclusive purpose.

In America, pantries evolved from early Colonial American "butteries", built in a cold north corner of a Colonial home, into a variety of pantries in self-sufficient farmsteads. Butler's pantries, or china pantries, were built between the dining room and kitchen of a middle class English or American home, especially in the latter part of the 19th into the early 20th centuries. Great estates, such as Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina or Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio had large warrens of pantries and other domestic "offices", echoing their British 'Great House' counterparts.