Our ancestors had domesticated fire by about 1.6 million years and with fire they began cooking their food. For most of human history, cooking was done over an open fire, and, in most cases, this fire was not located within the house or dwelling. As people began to settle into permanent villages with substantial houses following the development of agriculture, cooking often moved inside. Eventually, a room in the house, known in modern English as the kitchen, developed for food preparation and cooking. 

Next to the kitchen, the pantry evolved from a room dedicated to grain storage to a walk-in space for food and utensils storage, and food preparation. With regard to etymology, pantry entered into English in the early fourteenth century as panterie or pantre meaning “a storeroom or closet, especially for bread.” It comes from the Anglo-French panetrie (“bread room”) which is from the Medieval Latin panataria (“office or room of a servant who has charge of food”) which is from the Latin panis (“bread”) which is from the Proto-Indo-European *pa- (“to feed”).

The Priest River Museum in Priest River, Idaho, is in the 1895 Keyser family house, the first framed structure built in the area. Off the kitchen is the pantry.

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