FermenteaWhere food goes to change
626 sourced equipment pages: vessels, tools, appliances and built structures.
At Maeda Site in Aira, southern Kyushu, a late Middle Jōmon wetland held 72 pits associated with more than 100,000 acorns. The pits were dug in a groundwater-fed valley; their use may have included storage or soaking and sorting.
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A UV-treated polythene sheet over a wooden frame shelters internal drying racks, with low inlets and high side vents for natural airflow during fish drying.
An outdoor platform where households arrange onggi jars for fermenting, aging and storing Korean jang sauces. Platform materials and layouts vary; no single standard design is established.
A Rama cultural account distinguishes a small kitchen tapesco from a larger courtyard rack covered with bijagua leaves and placed over firewood. It records a particular smoking arrangement, not a standard design.
A Hidatsa underground storage chamber described by Buffalo Bird Woman in a first-person account published in 1917: a narrow-necked, jug-shaped pit lined with dry willow and grass, used to protect stored crops and other provisions.
A madfan is a covered underground grain chamber documented in Yemen, excavated in rock or firm earth. Sources do not establish one universal shape, locality or performance.
An excavated Scottish grain-drying kiln at Lockerbie Academy, with a deep stone-lined bowl connected by a flue to a separate firepit.
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Mandi ovens are ground-built pits for cooking a regional dish. A 2024 Seiyun report describes wood-fired pits dug into the earth; Saudi sources describe separate clay or iron restaurant pits and a tannour form.
The Chiloé curanto en hoyo is a fixed outdoor cooking pit heated with stones and covered with nalca leaves and earth or turf. It is distinct from curanto cooked in a pot; ingredients and layer order vary by household and occasion.
A Newfoundland flake was an open wooden platform where split, salted cod was laid in the sun to dry. It belongs to the historic coastal fishery, not to smokehouses.
Manoka's fish smoking takes place on pole racks inside airy houses; local partners later tested earth-brick and insulated metal prototypes to reduce wood use and processing time.
An underground grain-storage pit is a dug cavity for keeping dry grain, distinct from raised granaries and portable silos. Iron Age British examples are archaeological interpretations; experimental forms and results varied.
The Samoan umu is an above-ground cooking build in which a fire heats volcanic stones, and foods cook on the surface beneath leaf coverings.
At Sannai Maruyama in Aomori, some Jōmon storage pits had a narrow mouth and broad floor, with larger examples reaching two metres deep; nuts or chestnuts are the proposed stores.
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The Danish National Museum describes an oblong central long-fire inside Viking-Age longhouses, used for cooking while smoke escaped through a roof opening.
Dudkhāneh is a smokehouse term used in Gilan. A field report documents one fish-smoking workshop at Mobandan; its mud-plastered room and thatched roof are one local example, not a universal plan.
Fixed rectangular brick-lined fermentation pools at the Liu Ling Zui distillery in Xushui, Hebei. Heritage accounts disagree on their date and total number.
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A 2015 report documented a Yup’ik family smokehouse in Bethel, Alaska, where silver salmon strips hung from racks and cottonwood fed a wood stove. It is one household example, not a standard design.
A traditional Sikkim large-cardamom bhatti is a fixed, field-side curing structure: a stone or earth-sided fire chamber supports a raised bamboo-mat drying bed, where capsules are exposed to direct heat and smoke.
A limestone smokehouse on the Sauer–Beckmann farm near Stonewall, Texas, with a lower smoking room and an upper storage level. Built before 1900, it remains part of a living-history farm.
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A sandstone pit near Sogliano al Rubicone finishes the ripening of already-made cheese. Sources describe flask-like forms, straw lining and sealed wooden lids, but no universal excavation plan.
The zarb is a ground-built oven used by Bedouin cooks in Jordan. A fire heats the bottom of a broad pit; food is then lowered on a rack, covered and slow-cooked with the surrounding earth helping retain heat.
A Maine bean hole is a fixed, stone-lined pit that holds a covered iron pot among coals beneath earth. Logging-camp testimony and present-day demonstrations document related local practices.
A CIMAV industrial chipotle oven combines solar-heated water and recirculated air with auxiliary gas heat and a separate wood smoker. It differs from Camargo’s traditional open masonry cocedores; reports describe capacity differently.
The FAO-Thiaroye Processing Technique separates fish cooking from smoke flavouring. A heat-retaining cooking unit, fat collector, filtered smoke generator and smoking chamber reduce direct smoke and fat contact; installations vary by place.
An in-ground Yucatecan Maya oven that uses fire-heated stones and a covered pit to cook food slowly. Documented pit depth, coverings and loading sequence vary; this page presents sourced examples rather than one standard design.
The Chorkor, also called the Kagan smoker in early FAO documentation, pairs a low rectangular mud/clay oven with stacked removable wooden-frame, wire-mesh trays. FAO records its use at Chorkor, Ghana, from 1971.
A 2003 study describes a bamboo smoking kiln near the Sundarbans, with a sloping golpata roof, raised reed-and-bamboo platform and multiple fireplaces.
A mid-nineteenth-century brick smokehouse and summer-kitchen building on the former Sunderlage farmstead in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.
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The Tahitian ahimā‘a is a ground oven built in a pit, where hot volcanic stones and layered leaves and earth cook food slowly.
An agadir (plural igoudar) is a fixed Amazigh communal storehouse in Morocco for harvests and other valuables. Layout, materials and community rules vary by site; no single plan describes every granary.
Bojkhāne names a rice-smoking room in some Gilan accounts. It was part of a flexible household room tradition, not a single standardized plan.
A household smokehouse used for salmon by named Tseshaht and Hesquiaht families near the Somass River. A 2019 report records different supports and smoking outcomes; it gives no standard building plan.
A 2007 training manual records one covered shrimp-smoking shed in coastal Bangladesh, with bamboo racks above fires and a site-specific 15 × 45 ft footprint.
A surviving nineteenth-century stone smokehouse at Craster, Northumberland. Its tall, narrow rooms, hanging racks and roof vents belong to a commercial herring-curing works; the evidence describes this listed building, not a universal smoke
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A 1974 FAO report describes varied mud fish-smoking ovens around Nigeria’s Kainji Lake basin, including an hourglass form in its northern parts. It documents the form and broad use, but gives no dimensions or construction sequence.
A flood-season pit store described for Omagua communities along the Amazon: manioc tubers were buried before inundation and recovered as waters receded. Its shape and lining are not recorded.
A family of domestic smoking structures that used smoke rising from a hearth: from the Austrian Rauchkuchl spark hood to the Jougne farmhouse meat hood and the Franche-Comté tuyé.
A Swazi ingungu is an underground grain store beneath a homestead cattle kraal in Eswatini; stored grain could ferment slightly, while pest protection was the stated primary benefit.
A brick chimney smokehouse associated with Grimsby's traditional fish-curing trade. Individual buildings varied; one working Alfred Enderby example documents tall chimney bays with smoke pits and speats for hanging fish.
A source-based account of Appalachian meat-curing outbuildings, centered on the Henry Whitehead Place smokehouse at Cades Cove, Tennessee. Regional practice and this one building are kept distinct.
A small household pit dug into sandy ground on Namu Atoll to ferment breadfruit as bwiru. Nancy J. Pollock's 1968 field account describes its lagoon-side setting, leaf lining and stone-covered opening.
A fixed masonry-and-wood structure used in Camargo to smoke and dry ripe jalapeños into chipotle. Sources give regional dimensions and one separate experimental oven, not a safe construction plan.
A closed Banda is a fixed fish-smoking oven with enclosing mud-block or compacted-clay walls around a rectangular fire and a grill or wire-mesh platform. Its regional forms are not one standardized plan.
A reconstructed two-level grain-drying kiln at Acorn Bank Watermill in Temple Sowerby, Cumbria. A lower fire grate warms oats on a raised perforated floor; a baffle spreads heat, while smoke historically escaped through the roof ridge.
Show on mapA large clay-lined depression built beneath some Alutiiq house floors in the Kodiak region, documented in Koniag contexts for food storage and possibly fermentation.
A concrete fermentation tank installed below ground at a Senegalese fish-processing site was documented as an adaptation that emulated the older practice of burying fish during fermentation.
The Barbacuá is a fixed batch dryer for yerba mate. Its documented forms use a raised drying surface warmed by wood fire; one excavated example in Misiones preserves a stone flue below ground.
A bacówka is a seasonal shepherd’s hut built in place in the Polish Carpathians. Its documented hearth, cheese rooms and roof-space smoking link it to pastoral work; sources do not define one universal plan.
A fire-heated stone bed or mound holds food arranged on the stones and covered with leaves. The Samoan umu is one documented regional instance, not a universal blueprint.