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The Vintage Kitchen: Culinary tools to bring back this Thanksgiving
 | | Deep orange in color and sweeter in flavor, sugar pumpkins make the best pies, and are also excellent for roasting. Kitchen scales like this one are easy to find at flea markets, and will help with baking: always measure flour by weight, not volume. |  |  | | This utilitarian nutmeg grater is common, and is a far cry from the ornate silver nutmeg graters made in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such elaborate nutmeg graters, in cylindrical or hinged shapes, were used by well-to-do citizens to add flavor to foods and wine. | |  | | These fall-hued open salts cost $4 each at an antique store. Open salts can be most commonly found in glass, stone, porcelain, or marble, but not typically in a matching set like these. A mismatched set with a common theme - white milk glass, for example - can be just as beautiful as a matched set. | |  | | These antique graniteware baking pans are reasonably priced at $12 at a local antique store. Clean your enamelware with soap and water; baking soda or vinegar mixed with water are appropriate for removing stubborn stains. |
Overall, the time-saving implements that help us put on a feast at Thanksgiving - or any other day, for that matter - have been welcome and useful. If you'd rather buy ground nutmeg or whipped cream in a can, who can blame you? The holidays can be an especially stressful time if you're in charge of putting together a plentiful spread for hungry guests, but if you're looking to bring some vintage elements to your meal beyond the linens and dishes, consider these old-fashioned approaches.
Grate your own nutmeg. Nutmeg graters like the one pictured were commonly used before ground nutmeg became widely available in supermarkets, and are still used today. Freshly grated nutmeg has a better flavor than ground, which tends to lose flavor over time. Use freshly grated nutmeg in holiday drinks like eggnog and mulled wine, as well as in pumpkin and apple pies.
For the pumpkin pie, use a fresh pumpkin, and bake it in a vintage pie tin. Before Pyrex, there were tin and enamelware pie plates that offer a prettier picture on the table than plain glass. Graniteware is a kind of enamelware, made by coating a metal base object (steel, iron, or aluminum) with a porcelain enamel. This coating is very durable, can withstand high temperatures, and is easy to clean. As you might imagine, the addition of granite to the enamel coating earns a piece the name "graniteware," which was produced in a surprising array of colors, from the expected gray, white and blue to pink, green, beige, and even red. It was produced in several patterns, including spatter, swirl, and mottled. So-called end-of-day pieces are relatively rare and more valuable; these were produced from a mix of leftover colors to form unique designs and color combinations. Original granite and enamelware was popular from the late 19th century through the 1930's, though reproductions surfaced in the 1960's and are still being made today. Original graniteware is generally heavier than reproductions and is more likely to be marked and show signs of wear, though not all original graniteware is marked, and some reproduction pieces have intentional chips and "wear" to make them appear older.
When dinner is on the table, opt for pretty individual open salts over a shaker. Open salts (sometimes called salt cellars or salt dips), have been around as long as salt has, and only in the last 60 years or so have they been largely displaced by the shaker for most modern households. Open salts and the large crystals they contained were prone to becoming moist in rainy or otherwise humid weather, making it difficult to dust upon one's food. This is when manufacturers like Morton's began making salt suitable for pouring from a shaker - thus, the slogan, "When it rains, it pours." For a special occasion however, a flakier finishing salt in individual cellars adds a lovely vintage charm to a table, as well as a subtler flavor to the food you've worked so hard to get on your vintage table.
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