美国国家公共电台 NPR Like Moths To A Flame: Why Modern-Day Guests Always Gather In The Kitchen

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Across the country, people prepare for holiday parties, set out candles on the mantel, fold a blanket over that stain on the couch. But for all the work that's done to try and make a beautiful, welcoming living room, many guests just wind up in the kitchen. From Portland, Ore., Deena Prichep explores why.

DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE¹: Twinkly lights frame the doorways², and the living room table is filled with flowers and little bacon-wrapped appetizers³. Patrick Donaldson's holiday party is full-on festive⁴.

(CROSSTALK)

PRICHEP: But people keep leaving the comfy couches and drifting back to the kitchen. And it's not a big kitchen.

PATRICK DONALDSON: It's about 10 by 12, I would say - small. Sometimes I've been at parties where the kitchen is even smaller than this, and everybody is pinned in there.

PRICHEP: As an architect, Donaldson is well-aware of this tendency.

DONALDSON: Every time we do a remodel⁵ for somebody and we touch the kitchen, we are opening up the wall and connecting the kitchen to the living space.

PRICHEP: Donaldson even cut some squares into the wall separating his tiny kitchen from the living room to make them feel more connected. Guests can still see the party lights as they duck in to grab a bite of the ham he's carving⁶...

(SOUNDBITE OF ELECTRIC KNIFE CARVING)

PRICHEP: ...Follow friends or drop off some napkins in the trash.

FAITH DURAND: In the kitchen, you can relax. You can bump up against a counter. You don't have to worry about putting that glass of wine down. There might already be some mess.

PRICHEP: Faith Durand is editor-in-chief of Kitchn, a website about cooking, kitchen design and gatherings⁷.

DURAND: That polish and that social media beauty that we do want to create in our homes sometimes can have this weirdly⁸ cold effect for our guests. And I think people want to be where there's warmth.

PRICHEP: And that's the kitchen. But Elizabeth Cromley, an architectural historian, says go back 150 years, and this was not the case.

ELIZABETH CROMLEY: The kitchen would be this very separated place. And nobody else would want to go in the kitchen because you don't socially mix with your servants.

PRICHEP: Also, it didn't smell very good - a trifecta of poor refrigeration, inefficient⁹ cleansers and primitive¹⁰ plumbing¹¹. Cromley says more modest homes and tenements¹² would have central kitchens. But household labor¹³ was surprisingly common until it wasn't.

CROMLEY: As industrialization takes hold in the later 19th and early 20th century, if you had been a servant and you could get a factory job, you would make a lot more money.

PRICHEP: Households - housewives in particular - essentially¹⁴ became their own domestic labor. And the field of domestic science developed to tell them how to do it best, which meant smaller kitchens.

CROMLEY: One ideal was that the housewife could stand in the middle of her kitchen and reach everything. She would revolve¹⁵ in place.

PRICHEP: This tiny kitchen has since expanded to make room for more than one person and become more of a living space, with open windows and comfy chairs, because people want to spend time there, including at parties.

DONALDSON: After they have a couple drinks, they'll end up in here, next to the ham (laughter).

PRICHEP: Patrick Donaldson acknowledges it's not just his partner Jex's tamarind-and-honey-glazed ham that draws people in. They want to help out or hide from a couch full of people they don't really know or just feel that warmth. Editor Faith Durand has published her share of stories on how to shunt guests out of the kitchen. But if people do end up there, next to a sink full of dishes and wadded-up tinfoil¹⁶, that's fine.

DURAND: We've all been to those parties that feel a little magic. There is some swagger. There's pretty flowers. The lights are dim. The candles are going. But you also just feel comfortable.

PRICHEP: And that comfort and connection are the reasons we gather in the first place, even if it happens in the cozy¹⁷ mess of a crowded kitchen. For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRENDA LEE SONG, "ROCKIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE")