Festive meals and the varied uses of metals

During the recent festive season, I chanced to look around the kitchen in a different way and began to think of the myriad uses of metals in the preparation of food: the sinks, the spoons, the pans, etc.

The little boy in me looks forward eagerly to the year-end season lasting to Jan. 6 and why? Well, it’s all that muster of goodies and tucker we indulge in at this time: the plum pudding in flaming brandy with thick Devon custard, homemade mince pies, English brandy snaps, roast turkey, roast duck a l’orange, the thick turkey soup my wife Jean makes, Christmas cake with its thick top layer of marzipan and icing, German gingerbread men and so on.

My first memory of kitchen and metals as a young boy was watching the maids polish the gleaming sterling (92.5% fine silver) tableware. Prior to the polishing, they washed it in pump-water.

There was a cast iron pump from Georgian days in an adjacent scullery with (to me) a huge vertical lever to bring water up from the well below. Piped municipal water was available but the well water was preferred.

So my earliest memories of metals are of silver and cast iron, reinforced by the silver (80% Ag then) coin for a good answer given to a VIP visitor, but it was the silverware that impressed me more than the dark but friendly cast iron.

How vital a wide variety of metals is to food preparation. This pervading metals usage is growing in volume as the standard of living inches up in many lands and as more North Americans acquire that second fridge, a second freezer, an extra microwave oven and so on.

The first kitchen metal I see is stainless steel (18% chrome, 8% nickel), a conditioned reflex from my Inco days. Nickel is prominent all around: the double sink, the waste disposal unit, stainless steel saucepans (some with copper bottoms), frying pans, everyday knives and forks and spoons, the martini shaker and the stainless and tungsten steel carving knives. For fine slicing, we prefer the sharper, but plain, old Sheffield carbon steel knives.

I’ve always loved those large cast iron pots in which the jams and marmalades are made because, after jam-pouring, as a boy I was allowed to use my finger to clean out the final streaks of jam.

Now, for certain things, teflon- coated aluminum frying pans are extremely useful, and the French solid copper frying pan particularly so for specials.

Near the kitchen, in the dining room, is the sparkling but heavy Irish Waterford crystal chandelier, and set out on a festive table are the heavy, twinkling Waterford drinking glasses and bowls.

Few women and not enough men realize these beautiful crystal pieces have an (unglamorous) lead content of about 36%, added in oxide form to silica and potash, a technique developed in the British Isles, and even fewer picture the mines and refineries that come before the molten glass stage. This crystal production in many countries does help the lead price.

Years ago, while selling Canadian metals, I remember gazing in awe at the old craftsmen in Sheffield hand-producing those impressive solid sterling silver tablewares, coffee pots, teapots, jugs and bowls for cream and sugar, cutlery and trays.

The small sterling milk jug is always called a “cream.” The main business train to London is still called “The Master Cutler,” named for that elected officer, a high honor, representative of all the Sheffield metal industry.

If you could see it made, you would realize sterling tableware is worth every cent. Pieces from 200 and 250 years ago, each with its authenticated history, still sell briskly at the multi-company Silver Vaults market at Chancery Lane, London. T. P. (Tom) Mohide, a former president of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, served as a director of mining resources with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources prior to his retirement in 1986.