Stovetop cookware and oven bakeware split one kitchen toolkit
Cookware and bakeware are food-preparation vessels—pots, pans, sheets—used in kitchens. Cookware works on a stove or range cooktop; bakeware goes into an oven, though some pieces cross over. The oldest known pottery vessels, possibly early cooking pots, are nearly 20,000 years old.
Cookware sits on a stove and bakeware goes in the oven, and both vary widely in shape, material and surface: some materials conduct heat well, others hold it, and some surfaces are non-stick while others need seasoning. Handles and knobs of bakelite, plastic or wood stay cool enough to lift without oven gloves, and a well-designed pot has an edge for the lid to rest on and a lid rim that stops condensation dripping.
The oldest known pottery vessels, dated to 19,600 years before the present, come from Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi, China, and may have been cooking pots made by hunter-gatherers. Before pottery, people boiled water by dropping heated stones into leaf-lined pits or animal stomachs, and Frank Hamilton Cushing described Zuni cooking baskets and saw Havasupai people cooking in baskets in 1881. Plant gums and later glazes made earthenware waterproof, so it could hang over a fire on a tripod.
Bronze and iron cookware spread slowly because of cost, and the medieval kitchen managed mostly with a cauldron and a shallow earthenware pan. By the 17th century Western kitchens held skillets, baking pans, a kettle and several pots; brass and copper were common in Europe and Asia, iron in the American colonies. Metals for pots must conduct heat well yet not react with food, a rare combination.
Aluminium is light and conductive, used in sheet form for baking sheets and muffin pans and anodised for a hard, non-reactive surface, though bare aluminium can react with acidic foods; a suggested link to Alzheimer's disease remains unconfirmed. Copper conducts heat best among non-noble metals, with walls over 2.5 millimetres rated commercial grade, but it reacts with acids, so it is lined with tin, stainless steel, nickel or silver. Hand-wiped tin linings are 35 to 45 micrometres thick, and unlined copper suits meringue because copper ions help egg-white proteins bond.
Source: Cookware and bakeware
