The very building of a fire to cook the food was a laborious task with flint and steel, one generally avoided by never allowing the embers on the family hearth to die.  Fire was indeed a precious gift in that day, and that the methods sometimes used in obtaining it were truly primitive, may be conjectured from the following extract from Prince’s Annals of New England:  “April 21, 1631.  The house of John Page of Waterton burnt by carrying a few coals from one house to another.  A coal fell by the way and kindled the leaves."[85]

Over those great fire-places of colonial times many a wife presented herself as a burnt offering to her lord and master, the goodman of the house.  The pots and kettles that ornamented the kitchen walls were implements for pre-historic giants rather than for frail women.  The brass or copper kettles often holding fifteen gallons, and the huge iron pots weighing forty pounds, were lugged hither and thither by women whose every ounce of strength was needed for the too frequent pangs of child-birth.  The colonists boasted of the number of generations a kettle would outlast; but perhaps the generations were too short—­thanks to the size of the kettle.

And yet with such cumbersome utensils, the good wives of all the colonies prepared meals that would drive the modern cook to distraction.  Hear these eighteenth century comments on Philadelphia menus: 

“This plain Friend [Miers Fisher, a young Quaker lawyer], with his plain but pretty wife with her Thees and Thous, had provided us a costly entertainment:  ducks, hams, chickens, beef, pig, tarts, creams, custards, jellies, fools, trifles, floating islands, beer, porter, punch, wine and along, etc.”

“At the home of Chief Justice Chew.  About four o’clock we were called to dinner.  Turtle and every other thing, flummery, jellies, sweetmeats of twenty sorts, trifles, whipped sillabubs, floating islands, fools, etc., with a dessert of fruits, raisins, almonds, pears, peaches.

“A most sinful feast again! everything which could delight the eye or allure the taste; curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various sorts, twenty kinds of tarts, fools, trifles, floating islands, whipped sillabubs, etc.  Parmesan cheese, punch, wine, porter, beer."[86]

To be a housewife in colonial days evidently required the strength of Hercules, the skill of Tubal Cain, and the patience of Job.  Such an advertisement as that appearing in the Pennsylvania Packet of September 23, 1780, was not an exceptional challenge to female ingenuity and perseverance: 

“Wanted at a Seat about half a day’s journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affiable, cheerful, active and amiable Disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female Concerns of country business, as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc., and occasionally to instruct two Young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, who, with their father, compose the Family.  Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem, and meet with every encouragement due to such a character.”