Larder or pantry? What's the difference?
, by Sarah Frame, 1 min reading time
Every kitchen has one. A cupboard, a alcove, a tall unit in the corner where tins go to wait. We call it a larder or a pantry without really thinking about it. But those two words have a story behind them. A rather good one, as it happens.
Both arrived in England at roughly the same time. 1066, if you want to be precise about it. The Normans brought them over along with everything else they had strong opinions about, including what rooms a decent home should have and what they should be called.
Pantry comes from the Old French paneterie. That traces back to the Latin panis, meaning bread. (Pain?) A pantry was, quite literally, the bread room. The place where loaves were kept, rationed out and watched over.
Larder takes a different route. It comes from the Old French lardier, which in turn comes from the Latin lardum - lard, or cured pork fat. A larder was originally where meat was stored. Specifically where joints and cuts were preserved in fat, packed into crocks and kept cool. Not especially glamorous. Extremely practical.
So one room was built around bread. The other around fat. Together, they covered the two things that kept a household going through a hard winter.
Over the centuries, the distinction blurred. Refrigerators arrived. Supermarkets arrived. The need to pack bacon into a barrel of its own fat largely disappeared. Both words drifted towards meaning the same thing: somewhere cool and dry where you keep food.
These days, larder tends to carry a bit more weight. People reach for it when they want to suggest something solid and considered. A proper larder unit rather than a shelf with a door on it. There is a reason furniture people use the word deliberately.
We do, at any rate. And we certainly rate our larder unit.