Room 15 ~ Winona

We visited Montgomery’s Inn at Islington and Dundas West.

Before we started to cook, we had to wash our hands in a pail of warm water, using a home-made bar of soap made from animal fat and ash.

The sugar loaf at Montgomery’s Inn was much larger than the one at Fort York. The cook used a tool called sugar nippers to snap off pieces of sugar from the cone.

To measure sugar, we used a scale and weights.

Spices were stored in individual metal boxes and kept in a larger metal box that locked.

When the cookie dough was ready to roll out we used a flour dredger to sprinkle flour onto the pastry board and rolling pin.

The cookies were put onto a hot griddle to cook.

The griddle handle was suspended over the fire by an S-hook that was attached to a movable crane.

We baked the cookies in the down hearth over an open fire in a large brick fireplace.

Here are some things we learned. Cookies bake faster over a fire than in an oven. Â Breads were cooked in heavy cast iron pots with lids called dutch ovens. Â The dutch oven was put on a bed of coals with more coals put on the lid to provide heat from above and below. Â Spices and sugar were very expensive in the 1800’s because they were imported. Â They were kept in locked containers because of their value. At Fort York we measured dry ingredients in a tea cup. Â At Montgomery’s Inn we used a scale and bronze weights to measure sugar.

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