When Were Dogs Used as Kitchen Appliances?

In the 1400s through the 1900s, many kitchens made a specific breed of dog run in a wheel in order to rotate a spit of meat over the hearth's open fire. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/turnspit-dogs.htm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lorn
vogelbaumb Here. During the fifteen hundreds, dogs were more than
just companions. There was a dog breed for nearly everything,
the herding sheep, tracking wild game, and even warming up
cold laps on chilly days. But in Wales and beyond,

(00:24):
there was a dog that found a role in the
kitchens of homes large and small. He was known as
the turnspit dog or spit dog. They had long, stocky
bodies and short legs, and their job was to turn
the wooden wheel that would spin the roasting spit in
the hearth before the arrival of the automated roasting spit.

(00:45):
Open fire roasting meant that the spit had to be
cranked continually by hand for evenly cooked meat. The task
often fell to the lowest ranking member of a kitchen staff,
as it was miserable work. That is, until someone figured
out that you could make a dog do it. The
small cooking dog was bred to run on a wheel

(01:06):
like a hamster wheel. There was attached to a chain
that would turn the roasting spit. This canine innovation was
hailed as a major life improvement The first mention of
the turnspit dog dates from fifteen seventy six, in the
earliest book on dogs in the English language, called of
English Dogs. And the turnspit dog wasn't just popular in Britain.

(01:28):
Their breeding continued for a few centuries, and they made
the trek from Great Britain to North America. Since they
were pandy for more than just roasting meat, they were
also used for other domestic tasks like churning butter, pressing fruits,
pumping water, and milling grain. However, they never gained the
same popularity here. In kitchens, turnspit dogs wheels were mounted

(01:50):
high up on the wall and well away from the
fire to prevent them from overheating, but it still would
have been exhausting work. The dogs were considered machinery, not
pets because it was so labor intensive. Many turnspit dogs
would work in pairs, trading off on the meat spinning
hamster wheel, and some think that that tag team is
the origin of the phrase every dog has his day.

(02:14):
Later on, in the eighteen fifties, the dog's treatment in
Manhattan hotel kitchens partially inspired the founding of the Society
for the Prevention of cruelty to animals. A back in
Britain on Sundays, the dogs may have gotten a bit
of a break when their owners took them to church.
They were considered useful as footwarmers too. The dogs were

(02:35):
popular there for centuries a. Shakespeare and Darwin both wrote
about them. In seventeen fifty, there were turnspit dogs everywhere
in Britain, but by eighteen fifty they were hard to find,
and by nineteen hundred that all but disappeared, mostly because
of the invention of spit turning machines called clock jacks.
This new technology ultimately unleashed turnspits and led to the

(02:59):
breed's extinction. With the invention of these cheap spit turning machines,
the small dogs just weren't needed anymore. Owning one became
a sign of poverty, and the dogs have been bred
to work, not to be cute or have fun dispositions.
No one really wanted to keep them as pets, so
today the turnspit dog is extinct. The only one that

(03:22):
survives is in a hunting lodge in an ancient Norman
castle in Wales. Granted, this one isn't working in the kitchens.
She's a taxidermy to turnspit dog named Whiskey. Her closest
dog relative is likely the Welsh Corgi, the pampered pooch
of the late Queen Elizabeth. The second Today's episode is

(03:45):
based on the article Turnspit Dogs the Elizabethan Kitchen gadget
bread to cook meat on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Kristen Conger. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership of
HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler klang A.
Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the airheart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,