Scullions were servants hired to do menial tasks in the kitchen and around the house during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Their job involved heavy-duty cleaning, food preparation, laundry, and other menial tasks. They were at the bottom of the complex hierarchy of servants and were eventually replaced by modern conveniences.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a scullion was a servant hired to do menial jobs around the house, especially in the kitchen. After the Renaissance, such servants certainly existed, but they began to be supplanted by scullions, and by the 20th century scullions were essentially non-existent, replaced by a variety of modern conveniences that made their jobs obsolete.
A kitchen boy’s job would be dirty, exhausting and miserable. By convention, scullery maids were at the bottom of the complex hierarchy of servants, and while a scullery boy would officially be under the direction of the scullery maid, he would be expected to obey the orders of essentially everyone employed in the household, which meant that a variety of tasks might fit into his job description.
The word ‘sculion’ is taken from the Old French escouvillon, meaning ‘towel’, giving you a good idea of the value of a kitchen boy in the house. In the kitchen, scullions did the heavy-duty cleaning of pots, pans and utensils, while finer kitchen items were cleaned by high-ranking members of staff. Scullions also handled the more unpleasant aspects of food preparation, such as peeling potatoes, plucking poultry, pitting fruit for canning, and a variety of other duties. They would also have been responsible for cleaning the kitchen floors which could get quite messy after cooking for an important event.
Outside the kitchen, scullions mopped floors, cleaned fireplaces and stoves, emptied chamber pots, and performed other menial tasks. Sculptors typically stayed out of the way of the occupants of the house and would not be entitled to the livery. As a general rule, most scullions would aspire to jobs higher up the ranks, where they could access perks like discarded candle ends, discarded food, and so on, which they in turn could use, trade, or sell.
Another important job of the kitchen boy was the laundry. In the Middle Ages, doing laundry was not a pleasant chore. Garments, sheets, rags, and anything else to be washed would have to be boiled over an open fire in a huge kettle, stirred with heavy scoops, and cleaned with harsh lye-based soaps. Once the laundry was soaked and extremely heavy, it had to be rinsed, wrung out, and then hung on the drying lines. Often, the task required several scullions to manipulate the heavy kettles and wet material, and they risked burns from steam, boiling water and fire in the process.
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