Henrik Nordenberg Frau in holländischer Küche

A kitchen maid or kitchen girl is a young

housemaid A maid, or housemaid or maidservant, is a female domestic worker. In the Victorian era domestic service was the second largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work. In developed Western nations, full-time maids ...

, or other junior female domestic worker.

Description

In the hierarchy of a

great house A great house is a large house or mansion with luxurious appointments and great retinues of indoor and outdoor staff. The term is used mainly historically, especially of properties at the turn of the 20th century, i.e., the late Victorian or ...

, the kitchen maid ranked below a cook and above a

scullery maid In great houses, scullery maids were the lowest-ranked and often the youngest of the female domestic servants and acted as assistant to a kitchen maid. Description The scullery maid reported (through the kitchen maid) to the cook or chef. Alon ...

. An experienced kitchen maid is an assistant cook; the position may be compared to that of a chef de partie in a professional

kitchen A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation in a dwelling or in a commercial establishment. A modern middle-class residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running water, a ...

. An early meaning of "

slut ''Slut (archaic: slattern)'' is an English-language term for a person, usually a woman or girl, who is considered to have loose sexual morals or who is sexually promiscuous. It is usually used as an insult, sexual slur or offensive term of di ...

" was "kitchen maid or drudge" (c. 1450), a meaning retained as late as the 18th century."slut"
etymonline.com In the 19th century a colloquial version was "kitching-maid".

Known kitchen maids

Margaret Powell Margaret Powell (1907 – April 1984) was an English writer. Her book about her experiences in domestic service, '' Below Stairs'', became a best-seller and she went on to write other books and became a television personality. ''Below Stair ...

worked as a kitchen girl at the age of 15.

References

{{reflist Maid Kit Domestic work