This title by Nancy Hiller is must read for anyone interested in American kitchens. It works on several levels. There is the story of the kitchen coming out of the closet of domestic slavery into the modern world of sociability and prestige ownership, an example of what happens when capitalism is applied to a domestic room, and the tale of the twentieth-century kitchen seen through the eyes of marketing and advertising, with its media messages and imagery. Finally my favourite – it identifies the precursors of the unfitted kitchen or the joint use of design and furniture-making to create a domestic room that can be comfortable, accommodating and effective.

Nancy Hiller is a rare beast of a cabinet maker, scholar and writer. She uses the Hoosier cabinet as a lens for social history. As a multi-purpose piece of furniture that claimed it could enable you to do almost everything you ever need to in a kitchen without moving a step, even saving up to 1592 steps in one day. Depending on what year you were in or what marketing message was being promoted, it might help the housewife to ‘stay young’, ‘abolish (household) slavery’ or be the best gift a father could give to his daughter to teach her how to cook. Its local setting is Indiana, where they had manufactured over a million cabinets and created hundreds of jobs by 1916. But its really a story of early twentieth-century America and the drive for efficient production, provision of mass furnishing, expectations of  consumer comfort alongside the gradual commercialisation of the kitchen industry. 

By 1933, the Hoosier cabinet was considered old fashioned and its decline was inevitable. Its legacy is both charming and valuable: antique hunters chase down  Hoosier cabinets as desirable gems for their contemporary kitchens, but best of all they remain an iconic reminder that there is an alternative to continuous counters, the American name for the ubiquitous fitted kitchens that most people have had to put up with in Britain and Europe. That is the price you pay for allowing commerce to run or rule the industry rather than designers and householders - in other words, human beings with emotional needs and a desire for comfort.

The Hoosier Cabinet in kitchen history. Nancy R Hiller. Indiana University Press 
ISNB 978-0-253-31424-6

See Designing a healthy kitchen: Part 2 - Cooking & Furniture and Designing a healthy kitchen: Part 1 - the Table for more on this topic.

• Review the architectural layout of your house. Bring the kitchen-living room to its centre if you can. Room uses can be swapped. The biggest room on the ground floor is ideal as many of the living functions have been added to the kitchen. Choose one next to the garden, with French doors if possible, as this hugely increases its user friendliness.
• People tend to be happiest between 7-10 pm, according to surveys outlined by Richard Layard in his book, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. Not coincidentally, this is the time the kitchen is most likely to be occupied. It’s an opportune time when human communication is hard wired, after work and before bed. If the kitchen environment is well designed, we can take advantage of this. As it is now a multipurpose space, we expand our natural sociability by installing a hearth, a second table for doing homework, or a perching point for chatting whilst doing a variety of kitchen tasks.
• The visual ‘ownership’ of the terrace or veranda immediately adjacent to the kitchen belongs to the kitchen but it needs to be designed so that it is highly functional and natural, almost wild in terms of plants, trees and shrubs. Space to eat at a table needs to be complimented by an area for chilling out with bean bags, and floor level living. A portable low level fireplace works wonders in the evening for sitting round, echoing a campfire experience. This is so rewarding and easily done by using an old drain cover raised off the deck.
• The design and décor can make the room feel like a comfortable and welcoming space, more akin to a living room than just a cooking zone. Food encourages us to cook, clean up and linger. A group of Harvard economists have created an economic theory that the rise in weight of Americans is inversely related to the time it takes to prep, cook, clean up, lay the table, etc. The more technology reduces food costs*, the more we eat and the less we feel bothered to cook and the more we snack. Reverse this and you have a virtuous, not vicious, circle.

* David M Cutler et al. “Why have Americans become more obese.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol 17 No 3 (Summer 2003). pp 93-118.

See Designing a healthy kitchen: Part 1 - the Table and Designing a healthy kitchen: Part 3 - the Whole House for more on this topic.

• Include a multi-level central island or soft-edged peninsula to make the act of cooking a sociable, pleasurable experience. Cooking and prepping should occur facing into the room. Designing ergonomic but user-friendly furniture puts the cooking at the centre of the room and helps the cook feel in control. He or she is like the conductor of an orchestra, bringing harmony to the process along with effective delivery of the food. Cooking facing towards the wall is no-no
• Include a plating surface near the cooktop that can double as a food bar. In this way, you can catch those meals that might have ended up as snacks or one-person events. Today’s busy families have to accommodate an array of diets and activities. But the most important thing is not what you eat, but eating together, even if standing up. By serving tapas, mezze style, everyone can find something they like and still eat together, serve themselves with others looking on so that portions taken are reasonable and then take their plate to the table. Not enough kitchens have these serving bars. Ideally, they should be accessible from behind the range, and raised in height to separate them from the messier cooking surfaces.
• A sense of order is key to making cooking efficient. We have developed a concept called dedicated work surfaces that provides enough but not too much counter top space to do one task efficiently. These are positioned carefully so as to be adjacent to related tasks, but still leave enough space for sociable pieces of furniture like a sofa and hutch/dresser.
• Having a place to display family pictures and children’s pottery is a clear sign of hominess. Adding bowls of fruit is both visually delightful and offers children and adults a chance to assuage their mid-meal hunger with something healthy. It’s also a delightful place to show off home grown produce. No kitchen should be without one.