A quick Google search regarding the origins of cast iron results in a rich story about an old technology that still has few equals. Cast iron, it turns out, has played an integral part in human life since 31 A.D. when an enterprising mechanical engineer and government official in Nanyang, China, figured out how to make the stuff more easily than it had been made before. I could claim to understand the process by which he effected this efficiency but, honestly, why? The intricacies of metallurgy, I confess, elude me. What is relevant is that by some accounts (hint: one of them ends in –pedia…) the bellows of the blast furnaces used to smelt cast iron were operated by humans and/or horses before old Du Shi came along. While scholars cannot determine if the bellows were made of leather or wood (and while that seems of rather trivial consequence here…), they note that the use of water to move the bellows—Du Shi’s invention—played a significant role in promoting the use of cast iron by making production better, faster, and, indeed, cheaper.
As is often documented in human history, anything worth making is worth turning into some sort of deadly weapon and by the early 18th century, the majority of cast iron was produced to make cannons and bullets (or is musketballs?) for the English Army. Also in the early 18th century, however, an Englishman named Abraham Darby began making pots at a foundry along the banks of the River Severn in the barely inhabited Shropshire countryside. The valley in which the Coalbrookdale Furnace that Darby rebuilt in 1709 was situated came to be called Ironbridge Gorge and is widely recognized as one of the sites central to the history of the Industrial Revolution. Although the family made its fortune on pots, the Furnace later came to produce the iron bridges that are so associated with the remarkable transformation of agrarian life to the mobile and urban life we have come to think of as “modern.”
But, back to pots. So, by the late 18th century, cast iron cookware was quite the thing. Adam Smith himself quantified the “wealth of nations” not in their GDP (which, of course, didn’t exist until Keynes and the macroeconomic revolution) or bullion (which did…) but rather in the number of pots and pans produced by a country’s furnaces and used in its family hearths. Cast iron cookware came to the New World along with other European fineries and became an indispensable kitchen tool for the rich and homely alike. Jefferson’s yeoman and Hamilton’s merchant both relied on cast iron to get dinner to the table. Able to withstand the heat of the open fires and the beatings and bangings of travel (Lewis & Clark crated a dutch oven in one of their keel boats to fix meals for the Expedition), cast iron cookware remained the centerpiece of the cook’s arsenal throughout the expansions and migrations of the 19th century. Back across the Atlantic, the French were the first to add porcelain enamel to cast iron, taking advantage of its superior heat conduction and durability but making it easier to clean and, let’s be honest, prettier. And for both Americans and French, the availability of cast iron pots shaped a hearty cuisine. In the New World, slow-cooked dishes like chili, delicacies like fried okra and fried chicken, and humble staples such as cornbread demanded the kind of even cooking and high heat that cast iron provided. For the French, peasant fare like Coq au Vin and charcroute were made possible by the appearance of cookware that helped a little heat go along way, turning the old hen into a tender and succulent braise and offal into a flavorful delicacy. In a very real way, the availability of cast iron cookware made the gastronomy of so many cultures possible.
And this is where, I suppose, things get personal. My cast iron skillet was handed down to my mother by her mother—not uncommon in the South—and somehow found its way to me. It is black and a little sticky and is never so lovely as when it shines with the evidence of use. Though it’s “natural” inclinations towards being non-stick make it ideal for sautéing temperamentally “low-fat” things, sometimes I can tell that it just wants to fry! Nothing connects me to my mother and grandmother quite so clearly as the smell of cornmeal as it turns that lovely caramel color in the bottom of a pool of hot oil. Deep frying used to scare me as a kid. I remember that it seemed the perfect image of courage to see my half-pint of a mother braving the sputtering, splattering mess to produce something magically crispy and savory for the dinner table. Fried food coming out of our kitchen--a rarity--seemed magical to me and it was my mother who was always the magician. My father did the lion’s share of the cooking in our house, but when the skillet wanted to fry, Mom was the right man for the job. And so as I have grown up and moved out on my own, I have learned to summon the bravery to take on the dangerous delights of deep-frying. It is not the gladiator's ring or bungee jumping, but deep frying is an extreme sport of another kind. The satisfaction of reviving this connection--a connection woven in the flavors and smells of food--to the women who have come before me—and of course of eating the results—long outlasts the pangs of guilt that come with imbibing something whose only pretensions towards nutrition are caloric.
The marriage between human beings and the tools they make and use is as central to the flowering of civilization on earth as is anything. While one’s daily encounters with the more glamorous products of this marriage—cars come to mind—certainly remind us of this, it is somehow more fulfilling to appreciate the humility of a hardy stalwart like the cast iron skillet. This connection to our collective past--and perhaps to our individual pasts--is certainly worth the heavy lifting. (And the okra ain't bad either).
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