Wai‘oli Mission House: Cook House

The cooking house.

"And this is the cook house." Roger brings us to the last room in the house. "In those days they built the cook house separate. In case a grease fire happened in the kitchen, you didn't also burn down the whole house. But 1840 Alexander built the pantry and the dining room, connected the two buildings.

"The chimney was cut out of coral sandstone at the Waipā river mouth, when Alexander put this together. He had to put the hardware in too. All this still works.

"This is an intact beehive oven that the fireplace would not heat, so they had to build a special fire in that. It took about two and a half hours to get the stones hot enough. The missionaries cooked their bread, their sweet potatoes, and their taro in there. Build a fire, push it aside, just like pizza ovens today, same thing. It opens and closes."

Coal Iron.

"That’s a coal iron. The missionaries didn’t break dress code. The still had their long sleeves, their long pants, their white collars. You put hot coals in the bottom, put the bellows in that hole and give it some pumps, get those coals nice and hot. The thing weighs 12-14 pounds empty."

"This is called the tin kitchen. It has no back to it, so you move it up next to the fire place, put your fish or meat on that spit, there’s a handle on the right that you turn like a rotisserie. In Hawai‘i they call it hulihuli, meaning 'to turn over'."

"These are Lucy and Abner's cooking pots. All the big stuff was cooked outside because it smelled so bad. This is just for cooking in the house."

"This looks like a bed warmer. You don’t need a bed warmer in Hawai‘i, that’s for chestnuts and popcorn. Something that could come around the Horn and not spoil."

"That’s a cheese wheel down on the floor, the round tub. Before they had a cow, Abner requested a wheel of cheese. Well, they sent the cheese wheel but it had no cheese in it. Abner was so mad he wrote two letters back to the Board complaining about it."

 

Two sets of candle molds, one on the corner of the table and the other hanging by the window. Edward welded it into a vase for Lucy, which is why it's hanging by the window. The butter churner is obscured in the back corner.

"They made butter for extra money. They had dueling butter churners. And there are candle molds.

"There’s day lily bulbs out there growing that the missionaries brought. Not the same ones, but the same idea. They would go around the Horn and they wouldn’t rot. Fruit, cheese—they wouldn’t make it past Rio de Janerio. They wanted a little bit of home with them."

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