Vintage Cookware In The Kitchen

5-ply bonded cookware, magic silicone baking sheet inserts, and the best Japanese Damascus blades a kitchen has ever seen. All of these are better than their ancient predecessors. Vintage cookware isn't a "things were better in the old days" banner so much as a feeling of connection.

The knowledge of different hands on the spoon you're stirring rice with, or twisting a 70-year-old pepper mill over a steak that has seen more culinary development than Antoine's, gives your simple task a bit more power. You have become, in the long line of cooks before you, part of the history of that utensil or pan. This isn't me going all-out animistic, but there is something to be said for using the cast iron pan your grandfather used. I cook meals for my wife with the wooden spoon my grandmother gave me. My wife never had the pleasure of meeting her, but she eats from her same proverbial table.

The steelsmiths and coppersmiths, long dead, still have a voice belting from the shadows. Its siren-song-singing draws the cook away from the Shun and HexClad to their bruised and beaten Chicago Cutlery and Guillaumet Villedieu.