Size Does Matter For the Right Job

Round about the caldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Or should this have gone in recipes :twisted:
 
I'd use that as a bathtub, but I'm afraid there's not enough water left in California to fill it.... :redface:
 
I spotted another one of these big pots the other night while I was watching "Fried Green Tomatoes". They were cooking up a bunch of barbeque pulled pork.
 
Need a very large oven to season this one. Need to make a BIG E-tank.

The small one is what I think a sales sample or toy? It is 4.5" wide X 2.5" high

2 photos to the right.

https://picasaweb.google.com/114772661409714296598/JeffreyR#6129217508977629106

Any ideas what it was used for?:icon_scratchchin:

I can't see the photo, but from what the others are saying it was probably a wash pot/hog pot.

When they would butcher hogs, they would start with a large pot of boiling water. Once the hog was killed and the blood drained, they would ladle boiling water over the hog to make the hair come off easier.

Most farms would butcher all the hogs for a year at one time, usually near Christmas, when the weather was cold enough so the meat wouldn't spoil before it could be cured in the smokehouse.

After butchering maybe 10 or 12 hogs, and using the boiling water, they would dump any water remaining and then use the same pot to render lard from the hog fat. They would always have some skin and meat in with the rendering fat, so there were cracklins and pork rinds. The cracklins would often be ground up and stored for later use as seasoning for vegetables, and for use in corn bread.
 
WOW, that is some history on, well lets just say PIGS. Do you know what a Gambrel is? Hint is was used some were in the prosses that you write about.

This kettle could have very much been used for the doing the PIG thing. But that is not the use that I was looking for.

sugaring%25252Ckettle_0352.jpg


sugaring%25252Ckettle_0353.jpg
 
Making maple syrup?

:icon_thumbsup:

I do think that it was used for a lot of things back in the day just as RLMuse stated. But the estate owners told me that the family had used it for maple syrup. It came from an estate that was in the same family for 180 years here in VT.
They would have 2 or 3 kettles cooking at the same time. The largest would hold the raw sap. As the sap boiled down it would get thicker and darker and they would scoop some into the next kettle. That way the syrup would finnish without over cooking. 40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup.
 
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