Etiquette of the Buttery

Hidden somewhere back of these things in those days were several bottles of what Grandmother called “special flavoring,” which she used to put into special occasion dishes of one kind or another, like plum pudding, fruit cake, and mincemeat; the bottles were not in plain sight in case a neighbor peeked into the butt'ry.

–Photo of the back cover art for The Butt’ry Book, by Tasha Tudor

From “The Buttery Book”

Cit’s people used to have pantries. The country counterpart of the pantry was called a “butt'ry.” In occasional hidden corners of New England, this country room may still be found in use, but only the most old-fashioned houses, loved and lived in by the most old-fashioned kind of people, have a “butt'ry” these days.

The butt'ry (properly spelled ‘buttery,’ of course) is a small room with a smell of good things to eat and a look of delicious plenty. It is located next to the kitchen in the cool corner of the house. Its window is shaded in summer by a crab-apple tree. We can watch a robin and her mate busily raising their family in the nest tucked between branches. 

We can reach out the window with a long-nosed watering can to give a drink to the fuchsia and begonia plants trailing their flowery stems in the dappled shade of the leaves. Through the window, we watch the lilacs and the old-fashioned roses come into bloom, and enjoy a view of the perennial border against its background of gray stone wall as its colors and patterns change from the daffodils of early spring to the last flowering chrysanthemum of the autumn.

In the winter, the bird feeder is easy to reach from the window, and who minds if we dip overmuch into the sugar bucket when whipping up a cake if we are diverted by the arrival of a cardinal or rose-breasted grosbeak on the windowsill? In the winter now the butt'ry is warm and cheerful, though in years gone by it was often bitter cold and the New England house wife who never dreamed of such a thing as an electric freezer kept her store of frozen pies and muffins and cookies handy to the kitchen on a shelf of the butt'ry.

Sheathed in warm-colored pine boards, the walls of the butt'ry are lined with hand-planed shelves, sturdy enough to bear the weight of jars, crocks, platters, and plates filled with the richness of country cooking. On the floor under the shelves are the bins of flour and the wooden bucket of are the stacks of milk pans and pails, the churns, the breadboard in place against the wall, to be pulled out often and placed on the wide shelf in front sugar. 

Here off the window, floured for rolling out cookies, pie and biscuit dough, or kneading bread, then dusted off and replaced in its niche. A big basket of apples fits into the corner; a pan of potatoes brought up from the cellar is next to the apples. Several battered lard pails and a half-dozen old Shaker made wooden blueberry boxes await July blueberry-picking time.

Here too is kept the crock of tutti-frutti, which is as much a part of the butt'ry equipment as anything else you can see there. It holds two gallons of rich fruit sauce for ladling generously onto a plate of vanilla ice cream or a slice of pound or sponge cake, and I've known many a time when a finger was surreptitiously dipped in and popped into an appreciative mouth for elegant tasting. The jar is always empty by the time the first fresh straw berries are brought in from the garden, washed clean then, and a pint of the very best brandy poured in. Two cups of firm red-ripe strawberries are sliced in half and added to the brandy, then two cups of sugar on top. This is stirred gently every day with a long-handled wooden spoon until the sugar is dissolved. 

Next fresh pineapple is peeled, sliced, and cut into small wedges. Cherries, black and sweet red, are pitted and stirred in. Added, in season, with equal amounts of sugar are two cups each of raspberries, left whole; then blackberries; apricots, quartered; peaches cut in generous cubes after skins have been removed. This is all stirred carefully after each addition until sugar has melted in. Several thicknesses of cheesecloth laid across the mouth of the jar, with the lid on top, keep out fruit flies, is kept at least a month before tasting, to “marry” the fruit flavors. Grapes are too thick skinned, pears and apples too bland to use. Blueberries, perhaps a handful, are sometimes added just for texture change, but they are apt to become tough-skinned and lose their individual flavor.

High on the top shelf of the butt'ry are the special-occasion dishes that are not used every day. The Canton-china punch bowl is carefully wrapped in tissue. The Turk's head mold for holiday cake-baking is there, and the turkey platter. Grandmother gave Grandfather that silver eggnog bowl on their silver wedding anniversary for serving his own special eggnog. This was the only thing he was ever known to step into the butt'ry to do, but this he did with a flourish and a disregard for the cost of rich ingredients that befitted the gracious Victorian gentleman. 

Hidden somewhere back of these things in those days were several bottles of what Grandmother called “special flavoring,” which she used to put into special occasion dishes of one kind or another, like plum pudding, fruit cake, and mincemeat; the bottles were not in plain sight in case a neighbor peeked into the butt'ry.

The spice chest doesn't begin to hold all the aromatic herbs and spices needed for good New England cooking, so they spill across the shelf in an array of highly decorative tins and jars and small wooden boxes labeled Turmeric and Cardamom and Mace and Saffron and Marjoram and many other romantic, pungent smelling, spicy-sounding names.

A pepper grinder and a tin nutmeg grater sit beside the lovely wooden lemon squeezer. The coffee mill is a two-wheeled generous one. In earlier days, green coffee beans were roasted in the oven just the proper amount, then fresh-ground for each pot. Now we buy already roasted beans mixed to order, and for special occasions there is a tin of S.S. Pierce's mocha java always on hand.

Cooky molds of many shapes and sizes, mixing spoons and ladles with long handles, brass scoops, a rolling pin, and a copper cream skimmer hang here too. Worn and scratched from years of use are the butter paddles and chopping bowls of wood, a small cutting board with a sharp, sharp knife. The silvery sheen of pewter plates and measures contrasts with the warm yellow of the mixing crocks and cream pans.

From The Butt’ry Shelf Cookbook, by Mary Mason Campbell, 1968 

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