Revised Jun 21 2021
The cooking is performed by the females. Their cooking-places are apart from their dwellings; and there are no fire-places in any of the houses. Baked, not roasted, meats are the substantial luxuries of the table at Pitcairn. Their ovens, like those at Otaheite, described by Captain Cook, are formed with stones in the ground. Captain Beechey says, that an oven is made in the ground, sufficiently large to contain a good-sized pig, and is lined throughout with stones nearly equal in size. These, having been made as hot as possible, are covered with some broad leaves, generally of the ti-plant, and on them is placed the meat. If it be a pig, its inside is lined with heated stones, as well as the oven. Such vegetables as are to accompany the meal are then placed round the meat that is to be dressed. The whole is covered with leaves of the ti-plant, and buried beneath a heap of earth, straw, or rushes and boughs, which by a little use become matted into one mass. In about an hour and a quarter, the meat is sufficiently cooked.
There is much wisdom in the arrangement regarding the absence of fire-places from their wooden cottages. They are also sparing in their use of lights in general. They have no candles, but use oil, and torches made with nuts of the Doodoe-tree (Aleurites triloba). They have no glass for the windows. The shutters, which serve the purpose of admitting light and air, are closed in bad weather. For the most part pure water, but, now and then, tea, constitutes their drink. Cocoa-nut milk, and water sweetened with syrup, extracted from the bruised sugar-cane, vary the drinks of these temperate people. No wines or spirits are admitted to the island, except in small quantities for medicinal purposes. The water which they use does not come from springs, (there are none in the island,) but from reservoirs or tanks, neatly excavated, which collect the rain. Of these there are five or six, holding from three to four thousand gallons of water each, sufficient not only for the consumption of the inhabitants, but for supplies to whalers and other vessels.