There's a certain amount of confusion about the name for that three-legged, long-handled skillet we call a"spider" Collectors of kitchenware tell us that its silhouette evokes the arachnid-high stilty legs holding up a round body. Having a bit of a stretch, the extended handle appendage could be somehow lifelike. The organic nature of the picture is carried to its title, as was typical of historical technology vocabulary. It's like the frequent use of this phrase"dogs," (initially work creatures,) and the terms"firedogs" (andirons,) or"spit dogs" (mechanical spit turners.)
The first reference offered is an American ad:"The Pa.. By applying a certain logic to Robinson's advertisement, the spider, being a bake pan nor a skillet, is by default a frying pan. And therefore it seems to have been, based on hints from the baskets themselves and in the recipes.
An individual can speculate that they evolved from the skillet one discovers in ancient paintings, where high-legged skillet are rare. They clearly show the elements of earlier Dutch cast-iron frying pans (no legs) used for sandwiches, for instance, or seventeenth-century ceramic, three-legged rounded pipkins.
By mid-nineteenth century, cast-iron skillet, flat bottomed, slant sided, and three-legged, assumed the sooner name and were called lions. The brand new cookstove had affected new bud layouts. Legs were eliminated and rounded bottoms were flattened. This was a death knell for its gorgeous bowl-shaped spiders; deep frying and simple warming were currently the state of deep-stamped iron fryers and saucepans. In their pared-down type, spiders continued to serve as shallow frying pans but under a variety of elderly names-pans, frying pans, and skillets. And even though they had been legless, they sometimes kept their elderly name-spiders.
The same period produced deep flat-bottomed, stamped-iron spiders on big strap legs. I have two of these in my group, identical but for dimension (these were not accidentals, and discover they are excellent deep fryers. Their structure is not as careful than the common eighteenth century variants; there's some risk that they're Long Island pieces. I have not seen them in exchange catalogs or publications on iron, and aside from the layers of dirt they arrived with, I do not have any documentary evidence of the intended use. I'd really like to hear from anybody who does.
In any case, spiders--the name along with the pan--continued to be a strong part of kitchen culture. They need to have been in general use and widely known, as various American writers of fiction and poetry used spiders to make a literary point. John Galt described a"a judicious selection of spiders and frying-pans." Poet John Greenleaf Whittier knew his readers will understand his pictures at the line"Like fishes dreaming about the flying and sea in the spider" In her novel We Women (1870): ):. Adeline D. T. Whitney invoked a kind of national life with the line,"It's slopping and burning off and putting off with a rinse that produces kettles and lions"
Another perspective of spider history stems from early recipes. English fried foods required"skillet" (not the American"spiders.") Martha Bradley's extensive The Experienced Housewife (London, 1756) had many sections entitled"Of Frying." These dishes always required a"frying-pan," as distinguished from different sorts of baskets wok japanese cooking such as the"stewpans" in which she simmered ragoos. Frying pans, broadly known, were fabricated in varying stages to match the cook's need of lard or butter. These recipes didn't mention spiders.
A search of early American printed cookbooks also turned up very few skillet of the name. Considering its familiarity nowadays, the term"spider" appears to have been surprisingly fresh. Undoubtedly frying pans abounded, as people continued to fry, but they had been known by other names. Regionality might be the key to this. The"best form of frying pan" was explained by Mrs. Lee (Boston, 1832) as follows:"A frying-pan ought to be about four inches deep, with a perfectly flat and thick bottom, twelve inches long and two broad wide, with vertical sides, and must be half full of fat..." Hers appears like an oval, apparently cast iron, a rare shape today. Maybe she assumed (from the date and the incidence of fireside cooking at the time) you'd understand there were legs.
You need to go to the early nineteenth century Boston and New England cookbooks to find spiders. The first American mention of spiders was in a fritter recipe in Lydia Maria Child's Frugal Housewife (Boston, 1833): She wrote,"Flat-jacks, or fritters, don't differ from pancakes, only in being blended softer. . .They are not to be boiled in fat, such as breads; the spider [emphasis mine] or griddle has to be well greased, as well as the cakes poured as big as you need them, when it's fairly hot; if it becomes brown on one side, to be turned over upon another..." All these are clearly the kind of sausage we create today, and the method is a sort of pan baking. Child's spider must have been a flat-bottomed assortment of cast iron, probably with legs, as her age was still largely hearth oriented. Mrs. Howland's spider is without a doubt a heavy skillet, the iron employed as a griddle does."
From the end of the century spiders--that the restyled stove best kind--were still in use with their name. Sometimes they were used for skillet.