KITCHENS AND DINING ROOMS AT POMPEII ... - Get a Free Blog

The type of building in which it is easiest to see, hear and smell food preparation from a
fixed dining areas is (not surprisingly) the diner. Cooking and eating are necessarily in close
quarters in eating establishments; customers could not enter the fixed dining area without
passing by the front counter and noticing the cooking on its built-in hearth. Over half of the
dining areas are within direct or indirect visual contact with the hearth or the entrance to the
cooking area. All dining areas are within range of hearing food preparation, and 78% allow
persons in the dining area to smell the preparation of food or drink. 210 In (work)shop-houses,
cooking areas are not so noticeable -- only about one-third are visible to any degree, all are within
range of sound, and just 46% can be smelled from the dining areas. 211
In houses, cooking areas are even less noticeable. They are somewhat visible in case
piccole, where almost half of the dining areas are able to see a cooking area, but only 27% of
dining areas were within range of smell of the cooking (all are within range of sound). 212 For
case medie, less than one-fifth of dining areas were able to view the kitchen, and only 28% were
within the smell zone; again, all were within range of sound. 213 Only about one-fifth of dining
rooms in case grandi were able to see the cooking area, and a paltry 8% were within range of smell
(those in range consisted of the two dining areas in the 'servant quarters' around atrium A' in
I.7.10-12). 214 Most interestingly, these largest houses are the only ones in which not even the
sounds of cooking could be heard in some dining areas -- 31% in all.
In larger buildings, a decrease in the perceptibility of the cooking process is owed
directly to an increased distance between cooking and eating activities. Owners had more
available space in larger houses, and had the option of separating cooking and eating to a greater
degree. But owners did not have to push cooking and dining further apart. The consequences of
this decision was to make serving the food more difficult and time-consuming. Owners of large
houses deliberately segregated the two activities for social reasons: guests were not to witness
any food preparation before the meal was carried in. Hosts carefully made dining areas among
the best decorated rooms in the house, in order to impress guests. Hosts also carefully excluded
the more mundane domestic services of the household staff from the sensory experience of the
guests. 215
210 In diners, 22% of dining areas can see directly into a cooking area; for 33%, the entrance to the cooking
area is visible from a dining area.
211 23% of dining areas can see directly into a cooking area; for 15%, the entrance is visible.
212 18% of dining areas can see directly into a cooking area; for 27%, the entrance is visible.
213 8% of dining areas can see directly into a cooking area; for 10%, the entrance is visible.
214 8% of dining areas can see directly into a cooking area; for 15%, the entrance is visible.
215 This is not to say that guests in large houses never smelled or saw their food before they ate it. The large
number of portable braziers, often found in the vicinity of a dining area, implies that food was at least kept
warm, if not sometimes cooked, in full view of the guests, as Seneca states (see chapter two above, p. 73).
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