Pastry was made with your hands

There are lots of times in our house when I think of the women before who lived here. Often when reading books I wonder about who lived here when the character I'm reading was alive. There are a few times when I feel more connected to these women of yesterday, one when I'm scrubbing the tiles on our kitchen floor and another when I'm making pastry, by hand. These seem to be tasks that haven't changed through the ages.

'...she knew where the jam was kept and how to tie it down. She knew that bread was kept in the earthenware pan, smelling rather like a flower-pot, in the larder, cake in a tin in the cupboard. She knew that salt and eggs both made silver go a queer colour, that pastry was made with your hands and cake with a wooden spoon. She liked the hot smell of the oven, part grease, part warm metal, when the door was opened to put the pastry in. She loved the smell of rising bread, and of bread hot out of the oven, the queer, ether smell of steaming potatoes and the flat wash day smell of boiled pudding.' Elizabeth Cambridge Hostages of Fortune

kitchen

Whom do you imagine having lived in your home before?