Take a porringer full of curds...
Curds I got, but a porringer full – Is that a little or a lot of curds?
To make Loaves of cheesecurds.
Take a porringer full of curds, and four Eggs, whites and yolks, & so much flour as will make it stiff, then take a little Ginger, Nutmeg, and some salt, make them into leaves, and set them in an oven with a quick heat; when they begin to change colour take them out, and put melted butter to them and some Sack,[1] and a good store of Sugar, and so serve it.
- W.M., p.16-7.________________________________________
[1] A white wine imported from Spain or the Canary Islands; a sherry
And now more on porringers, maybe too much more on porringers. There are many 17th and 18th century porringers that are made from pewter and silver – Paul Revere made porringers – and if you look at museum collections, those are the ones you find. But if you look at archeological collections, you find more evidence of the earthen ware,or clay pottery, porringers.
There’s also a whole lot of nonsense written about porringers, about how they could be used for bleedings….you know, the drawing off of the bad blood sort of thing . I suppose if you were desperate you could just as well use a bucket, but bleeding cups show up in all the places that they need to and porringers were for eating out of, and really didn’t needed to be used for much else. Bowls are more of a multi-tasker. Porringers imply porridge, and the little handle imply a little hand holding.
And now for much, much more on porringers…..
Red earthenware vessels recovered from Excavation Unit 43, Context 5, Elkins B Site. Vessels marked with an (E) were recovered from the Elkins B Site and are thought to be manufactured by the Hillegas Brothers in Philadelphia circa 1720-1746. These vessels are compared with examples from the Hillegas Pottery site (H) and from the Scott Run historic site (SR). Top row (left to right): two sizes of shallow bowls with folded, rounded rims from the Hillegas Pottery site; a porringer with a tapered body from the Hillegas Pottery site; and a similar porringer handle/body sherd from the Elkins B site. Bottom row (left to right): rim sherds from the Elkins B Site and the Scott Run historic site with folded and rounded rims similar to those pictured above from the Hillegas Pottery site; a large redware bowl or milk pan rim sherd with an incised wavy line from the Elkins B Site; a redware storage jar with a similar incised wavy line from the Hillegas Pottery site (Photographers: Justin Colon and Lindsay Lee, October 2011) [HRI Neg.#11017/D9:008].
Rim sherds From the Elkins Locus B site exhibit folded lips that are rounded or tooled — a treatment that is similar to 17th-century North Holland and Low Country slipwares (Jennings et al. 1981:85-93). Rim diameters from three of the recovered bowls or shallow dishes range from 6.5 to 9 inches. Cress has suggested these represent graduated nesting sets that were intended for sale. Sherds from the Elkins B Site exhibit interior decoration consisting of central pinwheels (with counterclockwise sprays) bordered by verdigris green and white slip wave and band combinations identical to decoration observed on vessels produced by the Hillegas brothers (Cress 2002). Three identical rim sherds were recovered from the nearby Scott Run Historic Site [7NC-G-179] suggesting some kind of a connection between the two sites. Other recovered vessel forms thought to be made by the Hillegas brothers are storage vessels/crocks, a milk pan with a distinctive incised wavy line similar to incised lines found on some Hillegas storage vessels, a dark brown, manganese glazed porringer with a slightly flared, tapered, rounded rim, and a wheel thrown plate/charger.
Submitted by Bill Liebeknecht, MA, RPA, Hunter Research, Inc.
link to the Philadelphia Archeology Project Artifact of the Month March 2013
- Repro porringer at Plimoth Plantation retail







































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