Want to stock a pantry worthy of Mrs. Patmore? It’s more involved than it might first appear. Early twentieth-century kitchens relied on a relatively simple set of core ingredients, but they used them in more layered and resourceful ways than many modern home cooks do today. Much of this difference comes down to scale: estate kitchens were preparing food for large households, often using ingredients bought in bulk for both the family and the wider staff. While we no longer cook on that scale, it’s still possible to take inspiration from that approach and build a well-stocked, practical pantry at home. Here’s how to create a modern, scaled-down version of a Mrs. Patmore-style store cupboard.
Root vegetables, onions, and kitchen herbs
Potatoes appeared frequently in Edwardian cooking because they’re incredibly versatile and could be stored for long periods in the pre-refrigeration era. Cooks boiled them, mashed them, fried them in dripping, or added them to pies and stews. Other long-lasting root vegetables like carrots, turnips, swedes, cabbage, and parsnips also filled kitchen baskets throughout the colder months. And then there’s onions, which (again) were long-lasting and easy to preserve and added an immediate dash of strong flavor to any dish. Diced yellow onions appeared in a huge amount of savory cooking. Stews, gravies, soups, meat puddings, stuffing mixtures, and roasted dishes all relied on onions for depth and flavor.
Herbs would have been an integral part of any Edwardian estate kitchen – but they typically weren’t brought in in pots. Kitchen gardens supplied parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, mint, and bay leaves. Fresh herbs would be sprinkled into sauces, stuffing, soups, and roasted meat dishes throughout the year, depending on what was in season in the garden.
Fresh dairy
We don’t recommend that you get your own dairy herd and start churning your own butter (although go for it if you’ve got the time, money, and land!) But it’s important to remember that the likes of Mrs. Patmore would have made liberal use of ingredients to hand and readily available. And rural England is dairy country (so much so that it’s believed tolerance to lactose emerged in the British Isles – the land is so conducive to dairy animals that the population developed an unusually strong genetic tolerance to it). Mrs. Patmore would have been surrounded by farms supplying fresh milk, cream, and butter – the estate likely even had its own herds. And most houses at that time would have had a hen or two for fresh eggs.
As such, estate kitchens used butter, cream, eggs, and milk in a huge range of dishes, pastries, sauces, cakes, puddings, and more. If you don’t like eggs or are lactose intolerant, you would have struggled in Downton Abbey. But don’t worry – there are alternatives that can help you to recreate the experience. Coconut milk, for example, can be a good way to add the rich fattiness of dairy without the lactose for sweet dishes (but do be sure to account for the nuttier taste that will result).
Flour, oats, and dried staples
Large kitchens stored flour in serious quantities. Bread baking happened constantly because almost every meal required loaves, rolls, buns, or pastry.
Oats, barley, dried peas, and beans also appeared regularly in soups and filling dishes for staff meals. Cooks also used a lot of suet in puddings, dumplings, and pastry. You don’t see a lot of suet in stores these days, but it used to be a staple of British kitchens. Traditional butchers will still sell it, and you’ll find it a surprisingly versatile ingredient.
What about rice? Well, yes, you should definitely have a lot of rice in your Edwardian kitchen. But, surprisingly, the likes of Mrs. Patmore would have used rice as a sweet rather than a savory ingredient. She’d have mixed it with nutmeg, milk, butter, lemon zest, sugar, cinnamon, and other ingredients to make a variety of puddings.
Sugar, spices, and preserves
Edwardian kitchens preserved large amounts of fruit in both sweet and savory suspensions. Jams, marmalades, bottled fruit, chutneys, and pickles filled pantry shelves.
Sugar was always on hand. It was a vital ingredient for cakes, puddings, preserves, biscuits, and tea. Wealthier households used much larger amounts of sugar than earlier Victorian kitchens because prices had fallen significantly by the early twentieth century.
Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and mace appeared regularly in baking and puddings. You’d have found pepper and rich curry spices used to add heat to a range of savory dishes – it’s a myth that the Edwardian British never ate spicy food. They did – a lot!
Beer, wine, and fortified alcohol
You’ll need a lot of cooking alcohol for an authentic Edwardian kitchen. Beer – by which we mean traditional real ale, not carbonized American beer – was used in batter mixtures and to add depth and richness to slow-cooked dishes. If you can’t find any real ale for your own kitchen, Guinness is not a bad substitute.
Port and sherry would be used in sauces, soups, trifles, and desserts. Brandy is also commonly used in traditional British puddings – a Christmas pudding is soaked in brandy over several months, and then set on fire as it’s brought to the table during a traditional British Christmas dinner.
Bread, dripping, and preserved meat
Bread was easy to make and abundant, so it typically formed part of every estate meal. Loaves would be baked daily by kitchen staff, because absolutely nothing would go to waste or get stale – bread too far gone to be eaten as bread would be put into stuffing, puddings, breadcrumbs, and soups.
Cooks also kept bacon, ham, salted meat, dripping, and rendered fat in regular use. Before refrigeration became widespread, preserving meat formed part of ordinary kitchen management in large houses.
Remember to be realistic about what a modern kitchen can do (and what it needs!)
It’s easy to get disheartened when you read about huge volumes of preserved meat, daily bread-baking, hours of stewing, and days spent preserving. But remember – much of this happened because of necessity, not because it was necessary to the final dish. Period cooking relied heavily on roasting, stewing, baking, poaching, and slow simmering. Large cast iron ranges heated multiple pots at the same time throughout the day, and ingredients needed to be treated in certain ways (salted, for example) because there was no other way to keep them fresh long-term before refrigeration.
Mrs. Patmore’s kitchen depended on labor as much as ingredients. Kitchen maids peeled vegetables, cleaned pans, carried coal, scrubbed tables, and prepared stock long before formal cooking began upstairs. So don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have an army of maids at your disposal and need to bring in some stock cubes from the supermarket!
