There is a specific amount of confusion about the name for that three-legged, long-handled skillet we call a"spider" Collectors of kitchenware tell us that its shape evokes the arachnid-high stilty legs holding up a round body. Having a small stretch, the extended handle appendage could be lifelike. The opening at the shaped tip of the handle, normally a hook or a rattail, indicates a watch. The organic nature of the image is carried to its title, as was typical of historical technology vocabulary. It is like the regular use of the phrase"dogs," (initially work creatures,) and the terms"firedogs" (andirons,) or"spit dogs" (mechanical spit turners.)
The first reference offered is an American advertisement:"The Pa.. By applying a certain logic to Robinson's ad, the spider, being a bake pan nor a skillet, is by default a skillet. And therefore it seems to have been, according to clues from the baskets themselves and at the recipes.
An individual may speculate that they evolved out of the skillet one finds in early paintings, where high-legged skillet are rare. They clearly demonstrate the components of earlier Dutch cast-iron skillet (no legs) used for sandwiches, for instance, or seventeenth-century ceramic, three-legged rounded pipkins.
By mid-nineteenth century, cast-iron skillet, flat bottomed, slant sided, and still three-legged, assumed the earlier name and were also called lions. The brand new cookstove had affected new bud layouts. Legs were removed and curved bottoms were flattened. This was a death knell for its beautiful bowl-shaped spiders; deep frying and easy warming were currently the state of deep-stamped iron fryers and saucepans. In their pared-down type, spiders continued to serve as shallow frying pans but under a variety of elderly names-pans, frying pans, and skillets. And even though they had been legless, they sometimes kept their elderly name-spiders.
The same period produced deep flat-bottomed, stamped-iron spiders on big strap legs. I have two fry pan all clad-modernskillet of them in my collection, identical but for measurement (these weren't accidentals, and discover they're excellent deep fryers. Their structure isn't as careful than the common eighteenth century variants; there's some risk that they're Long Island pieces. I have not seen them in exchange catalogs or publications on iron, and aside from the layers of dirt that they came with, I don't have any documentary evidence of the intended usage. I would really like to hear from anyone who does.
In any case, spiders--the title along with the pan--continued to be a powerful part of kitchen culture. John Galt explained a"a judicious choice of spiders and frying-pans." Poet John Greenleaf Whittier understood his readers will understand his pictures in the line"Like fishes dreaming about the flying and sea from the spider" In her novel We Women (1870): ):. Adeline D. T. Whitney invoked a sort of national life with the line,"It's slopping and burning off and putting off with a rinse that generates kettles and lions"
Another perspective of spider background stems from ancient recipes. English fried foods required"frying pans" (not the American"spiders.") Martha Bradley's extensive The Experienced Housewife (London, 1756) had many segments entitled"Of Frying." These dishes always required a"frying-pan," as distinguished from various sorts of pots like the"stewpans" where she simmered ragoos. Frying pans, widely known, were fabricated in varying stages to suit the cook's requirement of lard or butter. These recipes did not mention spiders.
A search of early American printed cookbooks also turned up very few skillet of the title. Considering its familiarity today, the term"spider" seems to have been surprisingly refreshing. Undoubtedly skillet abounded, as people continued to fry, but they had been known by other names. Regionality might be the secret to this. The"best form of frying pan" was clarified by Mrs. Lee (Boston, 1832) as follows:"A frying-pan should be about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thick bottom, twelve inches long and two broad wide, with vertical sides, and have to be half filled with fat..." Hers appears like an oval, seemingly cast iron, a rare shape today. Maybe she assumed (from the date and the incidence of fireside cooking at that time) you'd understand there were legs.
The first American cite of spiders was in a fritter recipe in Lydia Maria Child's Frugal Housewife (Boston, 1833): She wrote,"Flat-jacks, or fritters, do not differ from pancakes, only in being blended softer. . .They are not to be boiled in fat, like breads; the spider [emphasis mine] or griddle must be well greased, and also the cakes poured as large as you need them, when it's quite hot; when it becomes brown on one side, to be turned over upon another..." All these are clearly the kind of sausage we create today, and the method is a sort of pan baking. Child's spider should have been a flat-bottomed assortment of cast iron, likely with legs, as her age was still largely hearth oriented. Mrs. Howland's spider is undeniably a heavy skillet, the iron working as a griddle does."
From the end of the century spiders--that the restyled stove best kind--were still in use with their previous name. Sometimes they were still used for skillet. By way of example, an 1880's Texas cookbook offered a recipe for"Crullers" that required"a lot of lard in the spider..." but gave no clues about its layout.