In the later middle ages did women work in the kitchen?

Answer 1

Common homes in the middle ages did not have seperate kitchens. Fuel was a significant expense, and ovens were impractical for most individual homes. It was also impractical to maintain a seperate fire for cooking apart from the one used for heating and lighting a home. Cooking was most often done in the main hall or room, over the hearth, or at the fireplace if there was one. Home cooking was boiled, stewed, spit roasted, or cooked on a grill over the fire. Bread was purchased from a baker in towns, and in villages made in a common ovens owned by the lord for a nominal fee. Towns had cookshops that provided pies and filled pastries, both savory and sweet. Ale, a universal food in the middle ages, would have been purchased from an aleseller by townsfolk and brewed in small batches by villagers (both for sale and personal consumption.)

Medieval ovens were primitive by modern standards. They were a stone or masonry chamber, usually with a domed top. A fire was built directly on the oven floor to heat it, and once hot the embers would be raked out, the floor cleaned with a cloth, items to be cooked were placed inside, and the front was closed up. The cost, both to build the oven, and also for the extra fuel required, made ovens most practical in situations where large amounts of cooking would be done, such as bakeries, food shops, or in places like castles or monestaries where large numbers of people needed to be fed. Private ovens were a sign of considerable wealth.

Answer 2

Whenever there have been kitchens, some women have worked in them, and others have not. Please see the link below to the question, "What did women do in the medieval ages?"