Magnolia Mound is a house museum where I used to volunteer as a docent. The main house dates to about 1790, but this kitchen is a reconstruction built on the site of the original. In the South, kitchens were usually separate from the main house because of the danger of fire. Before the Civil War, the cook on this plantation would have been an enslaved woman who worked from before dawn until after dinner, cooking over an open fire in a huge fireplace. Summers must have been brutal....
