Where do you keep your food?

What were refrigerators called before, Vinny? I always thought the word "fridge" came from the brand Frigedaire.

My grandmother had a pantry in her kitchen--she moved into the house around 1910. It was indeed a narrow room off the kitchen where she kept food and the everyday china. The pantry had counter tops for food prep as well. I think there was a sink as well, but I don't really remember.

I recently toured a historic mansion that had a butler's pantry that is bigger than my kitchen.

At the history museum where I am a docent, we have a mock up of a farm kitchen from the late 1920s. There is a sort of pantry off to the side. It's more of an elongated closet with shelves. The kitchen itself has no built in cabinetry or counters . There is a table in the center (my grandmother had one as well;most meals were eaten there, as the dining room was reserved for fancy occasions.)

In addition to the pantry, the mock kitchen has a Hoosier cabinet. The metal hoppers are for flour & sugar; the metal keeps out bugs & rodents. The sort of countertop pulls out for use.

Me, I keep stuff in my kitchen cabinets. I do own a Hoosier Cabinet, but it's not in the kitchen and I store other stuff in it. It doesn't have hoppers, but the drawers are lined with tin.

The Online Etymology Dictionary on "fridge"
>shortened and altered form of refrigerator, 1926, perhaps influenced by Frigidaire (1919), a popular early brand name of the appliances. Frigerator as a colloquial shortening is attested by 1886.

Hah! I can take it earlier than that. Wenham, Massachusetts, developed an ice harvesting industy in the early 19th C.
>To serve its customers better, the Wenham Lake Ice Company also sold "American Refrigerators or miniature ice-houses" so that the ice might be better preserved by the purchasers...
>The "Wenham" refrigerators were nothing more than air-tight boxes, sealed by a double-lid arrangement, and containing small shelves for food on the sides of the interior.

So, now let us go to Punch, volume 11, 1846. "A Plea for Plush," by William Makepeace Thackeray. He is lamenting the plight of servants who are required to stand in front of a door, wearing clothes of red plush, in the heat of summer. Small boys taunt them:
>I say BLAZES, vy don t you buy a Wenham 'frigerator

The kitchen itself has no built in cabinetry or counters . There is a table in the center (my grandmother had one as well;most meals were eaten there, as the dining room was reserved for fancy occasions.)

You brought a smile to my face, because that describes our kitchen before the remodeling I mentioned above. The dining room was used for fancy occasions such as holiday meals and birthday parties, but it also had an everyday use: we did our homework at the dining room table.

I'm guessing that most people in the US would only know "larder" from reading English novels. And for most of my life, "pantry" would have been a walk-in space for storing food. However, in the eighties and nineties in the US (maybe earlier), newly constructed houses often sported floor-to-ceiling cabinets, usually @2' deep, that were called pantries. I think that designation stuck.

"Fridge" wasn't used in NYC in the 1950s but began to catch on early in the 60s, if I recall correctly. At first it sounded a bit British and exotic. No longer.

I get the impression (and it's only that) that Americans use 'refrigerator' more than the Brits do. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone use it in normal, everyday life - although I might not have been paying enough attention.

#15, I agree.

In Hungary most houses still have a pantry, even the newly built ones. It is next to the kitchen, cooler than the rest of the house, and you can walk into it (and maybe take a couple of steps). The floor-to-ceiling shelves are packed with preserves, pickles, jams and smoked meat. When learning the English names of rooms, Hungarian students invariably ask for the word "pantry" that is seldom found in coursebooks.

My grandparents had neither a pantry nor indeed a kitchen. The cooker sat in isolation in a space between the back door and another door that existed solely to separate it from the living room, while the sink was in the living room, with a curtain that could be stretched across over it when it wasn't in use. The press (or cupboard or cabinet) in which food was kept was built into another corner of the living room.

They did however have a parlour, which was reserved for high celebrations, visitors of particular dignity such as priests, the display of family photographs, and the tumble dryer, because there was no space for it anywhere else.

#11 - Irish country kitchens traditionally had what was called a 'dresser', where all the crockery was kept. It was like the upper part of the Hoosier cabinet your picture shows, but could go all the way to the floor.