Or hotchpot of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo,
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace;
All these were cooked in the Manor kitchen,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
The early settlers were largely indebted to various forest trees for cheap, available, and utilizable material for the manufacture of both kitchen utensils and tableware. Wood-turning was for many years a recognized trade; dish-turner a business title. We find Lion Gardiner writing to John Winthrop, Jr., in 1652, “My wyfe desireth Mistress Lake to get her a dozen of trays for shee hearith that there is a good tray-maker with you.”
Governor Bradford found the Indians using wooden bowls, trays, and dishes, and the “Indian bowls,” made from the knots of maple-trees, were much sought after by housekeepers till this century. A fine specimen of these bowls is now in the Massachusetts Historical Society. It was originally taken from the wigwam of King Philip. Wooden noggins (low bowls with handles) are constantly named in early inventories, and Mary Ring, of Plymouth, thought, in 1633, that a “wodden cupp” was valuable enough to leave by will as a token of friendship. Wooden trenchers, also made by hand, were used on the table for more than a century, and were universally bequeathed by will, as by that of Miles Standish. White poplar wood made specially handsome dishes. Wooden pans were made in which to set milk. Wooden bread troughs were used in every home. These were oblong, trencher-shaped bowls, about a foot and a half in length, hollowed and shaped by hand from a log of wood. Across the trough ran lengthwise a stick or rod, on which the flour was sifted in a temse, or searce, or sieve. The saying, “set the Thames on fire,” is said to have been originally “set the temse on fire,” meaning that hard labor would, by the friction of constant turning, set the wooden temse, or sieve, on fire.
It was not necessary to apply to the wood-turner to manufacture these simply shaped dishes. Every winter the men and boys of the household manufactured every kind of domestic utensils and portions of farm implements that could be whittled or made from wood with simple tools. By the cheerful kitchen fireside much of this work was done. Indeed, the winter picture of the fireside should always show the figure of a whittling boy. They made butter paddles of red cherry, salt mortars, pig troughs, pokes, sled neaps, ax helves, which were sawn, whittled, and carefully scraped with glass; box traps and “figure 4” traps, noggins, keelers, rundlets, flails, cheese-hoops, cheese-ladders, stanchions, handles for all kinds of farm implements, and niddy-noddys. Strange to say, the latter word is not found in any of our dictionaries, though the word is as well known in country vernacular as the article itself—a hand-reel—or as the old riddle:—
Niddy-noddy,