Changes

In the late Medieval period in Europe, by the 12-13th centuries, kitchens in wealthier homes and palaces began to be more commonly separated. This created more class separation between areas where food was prepared versus areas where food was served. This had to do with the smoke and smells of the kitchen, which nobles were keen to separate. Alternatives included using sunken floor or areas to allow the smoke another way to escape away from the main building. In more common homes, fireplaces and chimneys were now more typically created, particularly around a side of the house or along one particular wall. This now made the corner of larger room or where chimney might be placed as an area where indoor cooking was done. Pots and pans were now mostly metalic, where they were hung above a fireplace on stands.<ref>For more on changes in kitchens in the late Medieval period, see: Freedman, Paul, ed. 2007. <i>Food: The History of Taste.</i> California Studies in Food and Culture 21. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref>

Although cooking was still mostly done in a basic space, by moving the cooking and food preparation space to a more isolated part of the house, thus reducing smoke in the living and dining area, the common living area or room where food could be shared became a more comfortable place to sit in. It increasingly became a space that became the primary social area of the house, as no longer smoke became a major obstacle for larger gatherings. By the 16th century, tiled heating was used more commonly, allowing the kitchen to be placed even farther away from the living area. Heating could now be transported across the house and the heating source could also be placed at different locations rather than dependent on the kitchen. More homes now even had a separate building used for the kitchen, while poor homes still had to rely on a combined kitchen and dining area with a form of stove sometimes used for cooking. For wealthy rooms, as they could afford to have another room or even building for the kitchen, this increasingly led to social barriers where kitchens were regulated for servants' or slaves' work.<ref>For more on the socialization of the living and dinning rooms as kitchens changed, see: Pennell, Sara. 2016. <i>The Birth of the English Kitchen, 1600-1850.</i> Cultures of Early Modern Europe. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.</ref>