Section LIV-II: Arranging the Kitchen — Stoves, Chimneys, Ventilation and a Small Household Kitchen
Complete English translation of the original 1901 kitchen arrangement notes, with all historical measurements and fittings.
As the purpose of my book is to assist housewives of more modest means, who must adapt to different circumstances in life, I shall set out in this chapter some ideas for arranging a kitchen in a small apartment. A kitchen may contain a Russian oven or a cooking range. Where there is a range, it should be built to use as little fuel as possible. Above it there should be a hood of iron painted with oil paint, or of wood, as is customary in Little Russia (Ukraine). The hood should fit tightly against the wall. Immediately beneath it, a square opening measuring five to six vershoks should lead into the chimney to create a draft. Fit this opening with shutters that close when the range is no longer being heated. A ventilator is placed in the opening.
The hood should be high enough that no one strikes their head against it. It is essential, the author says, for the health of the whole family. When the kitchen fills with smoke, opening the door to the cold staircase exposes the servants to chills and sends a draft through the entire apartment. Keeping the staircase door shut instead allows smoke to enter the living rooms, eventually permeating even the walls; the occupants then must wait until summer to air out the dwelling completely. For this reason, a cooking range should be expertly built with a hood that provides a strong draft. This is even more important in small apartments than large ones, where the kitchen is often sufficiently far from the rooms.
2) The entire kitchen, including the ceiling, should be painted with light-colored oil paint.
3) A kitchen should be clean and, therefore, spacious. It should not be crowded with furniture; the following fittings may help. Besides a kitchen table with a cupboard and two or three stools, there should be a firewood box built so that it can serve as a second table during the day, for setting down dishes or even ironing. For that reason the box should be three-quarters of an arshin wide, one and a half arshins long, and one arshin high. Its top should open so wood can be loaded in the morning. A door on one side should allow wood to be removed during the day. Leave the opposite side without a fixed wall so that the bottom is easy to clean. Instead, provide a hinged leaf, like those on certain dining tables, which folds down from the top and can be raised when necessary on a pull-out support. The box can then serve as a table two and a half arshins long, or three and a half arshins long with two leaves.
4) It is useful to make recesses for shelved cupboards in the kitchen’s outer wall: one warm cupboard and one cool cupboard with outside ventilators. Their doors should be carefully lined to prevent drafts and keep heat from the kitchen out of the cool space. Naturally, the larger these cupboards and the more storage space they provide, the better.
5) Where no other accommodation exists for the servant, the author also recommends making a bed recess at floor level in a warm load-bearing kitchen wall, that is, not the outer wall. The niche should be nine vershoks wide, two and three-quarters arshins long, and three arshins high. Make the bed within it as follows: install a sturdy thick varnished shelf half an arshin wide and two and three-quarters arshins long, three-quarters of an arshin above the floor.
Attach another board of approximately the same size to this shelf with hinges; attach three or four legs to the second board, also on hinges. At night open the cupboard, lower the board onto its legs and spread a mattress filled with chopped straw or sea grass. During the day fold up the mattress with the board and its legs, then shut the cupboard.
A chest can be placed beneath this shelf or bed, half inside the recess and half projecting outward to serve as a bench by day. The cupboard doors should therefore begin three-quarters of an arshin above the floor. They should not reach the very top of the niche either: leave at least three-quarters of an arshin of open space at the top so that the air inside does not become stagnant.
At the foot of the bed, within the niche, a small rack for clothes may be fixed; at the head, a rack for a personal towel.
The inside of the niche should be painted with oil paint.
6) In an older building where such a niche cannot be made, a very small kitchen sometimes leaves no room even to turn around or set up a second table, though a bed must also fit. The author suggests the following arrangement. Order a large, simple, clean, smooth table board, but instead of legs attach low trestles of the kind used on ordinary benches at both ends, a quarter-arshin from the edges and only four to six vershoks high. The board should be one and a half arshins wide and one arshin long. During the day set this large low bench over the servant’s bed so that it covers the bed completely. At night stand the bench upright against an empty wall. During the day it can serve as a table for dishes, ironing, or even cooking when necessary. The author considers this very convenient in a confined space.
7) In addition, folding shelves with brackets and similar folding benches can be attached to the kitchen walls.
8) Of course, there should be shelves for dishes; they should all be painted in oil paint to match the kitchen and ornamented with cut-out paper edging.
9) Nails should be driven into the wall for hanging towels, skimmers, kitchen spoons, sieves, boards used for cleaning herring, and similar articles. Better still, use black metal hooks screwed into the wall, sold at three or five kopecks a pair.
10) Where the corridor contains substantial supporting walls, make built-in wardrobes for clothing and linen, as well as small cupboards with drawers for different provisions, such as grain, macaroni and the like.
All these fittings should be considered part of the apartment itself.