If this pan could speak it would surely have a tale to tell.

It was made by Castle Brand in Nenagh sometime in the forties or fifties . This makes it at least sixty years old.
Sixty years, furthermore of constant use.

It was originally designed as a milk saucepan and as such these were very common in a lot of Irish kitchens when I was a child.
They were also designed to be used on the “new” electric cookers which were becoming fashionable and taking over from gas ones.
Consequently they were made with an exceptionally thick base to accommodate these new fangled electric black solid radiant hobs.
No bad thing for a gas hob either.

But the main reason for my love for this pot is that it is not made from my least favourite cooking medium ; stainless steel.
Now the base of a stainless pan is usually more or less okay , distributes heat etc. much as aluminium pots did before them.
My principal gripe with stainless steel is that the walls of the pot get unnaturally hot during cooking and should one be trying to make a sauce in a stainless saucepan and you splash some sauce on the wall it will burn and drop nasty bits of charred sauce into your pristine velouté.
As a result stainless steel is only used in our house to boil water.

Other than some , now mainly discredited , studies about twenty years ago which connected the use of aluminium to Alzhiemers ,I cannot understand its demise and the new vogue for its inferior cousin.

It was I am sure the profound impact of these early theories which caused Castle Brand to go into receivership some years ago.
What a shame , I am prepared to bet that we will not be using the stainless pots now in our kitchens in sixty years time.

My favourite pan made its way to us from Síle’s Aunt Emer who used it constantly in her house in Edenderry, when she died we inherited it and it has followed us about in our nomadic life through Kilkenny, Waterford and now France.

Just a glance at its pitted surface and the faded bakelite of its handle and in its lid is sufficient to tell us its great age and long hard life.
I am quite sure it will see me out.