Unpacking a well-packed pan

Frequently Asked Questions

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Contents

  1. Getting started
  2. About tin-lined copper
  3. Buying vintage copper
  4. Caring for vintage copper

1. Getting started

What’s so special about vintage French copper cookware?

Beginning in the 1700s, French food became a recognized element of French culture, and French craftsmen perfected the high-quality copper cookware in which to cook it. Many antique pans from the early 1800s and into the 1930s (until WWII) are made of extra-thick copper with ornate brass or cast iron handles. They’re beautiful objects made with pure copper that’s often thicker than anything made today, and when restored with a good lining of tin they are as wonderful for cooking food now as they were 150 years ago.

The second great era of French copper cookware began after World War II. In the 1950s, Chuck Williams visited France and got the idea to create a store in the United States modeled on the cookware stores he saw in Paris. Julia Child’s cooking show on television in the 1960s to the 1990s  popularized French cuisine, and people in the United States began seeking out French copper cookware. The French manufacturers responded enthusiastically, and even though copper from this era was made with modern manufacturing techniques and does not have the same handmade feel as antique copper, it can be just as thick and high-quality.

Can a vintage French copper pot be used for cooking?

Yes, if it’s in good physical condition and its lining is intact. For French copper pots and pans made before the 1970s, the lining will most likely be a layer of tin, which can be worn away as it’s used. If you get a pan with a worn-out lining, you need to have it relined with new tin before you cook with it. You’ll know it’s worn out when copper starts showing through.

You may wish to read my page on quality and condition for more of my opinions on this matter.

Where can I buy vintage French copper?

By definition, vintage French copper isn’t made any more, so you need to look on eBay, Etsy, and at antique stores and estate sales. While a lot of good copper pieces have already been imported into the US, more are still being “discovered” in France and Europe, often in an unrestored state. Some copper sellers will restore a piece before posting it for sale, while others will sell it to you in unrestored condition at a lower price.

Why buy vintage French copper instead of new copper cookware?

I won’t try to tell you what to do, but I will tell you why I’ve bought so much of it.

  • Because it’s thicker than copper cookware made today. Antique French copper was routinely made to be 3mm thick, and sometimes approaching 4mm or even 5mm. Mauviel’s consumer-grade pieces top out at 2.5mm; a handful of artisan coppersmiths make copper at 3mm, but nobody is making pieces thicker than that.
  • Because thicker copper cookware has unique beneficial properties for cooking. I’ll speak to this below, but in my opinion the best qualities of copper for cooking start to kick in around 2.5mm of thickness, and really settle in at 3mm.
  • Because I’ve accepted the costs of ownership. I am willing to pay more for a piece of vintage copper and the expenses of restoration and retinning.
  • Because I can work with the properties of tin. I understand how to cook with and clean my tin-lined copper and I have other pans for the occasions when tinned copper isn’t the best choice.
  • Because it’s beautiful and makes me happy. I love the look and feel of vintage copper. I love displaying it in my home. And I absolutely love cooking with it.

Is thicker copper better?

This ultimately comes down to preference. For the kind of cooking I do, I have built my cookware collection around pans that are at least 2.5mm thick, with the majority 3mm thick or more. But there are many other cooks and copper fans who have different opinions. I encourage you to visit the Copper Cookware subreddit forum to get to know different perspectives.

For cooking, I consider thin copper (2mm or less) to be useful for relatively few cooking tasks, while thicker copper (2.5mm or more) is useful for a great many more. A thin copper pan heats up and cools down quickly, and I would want that “responsiveness” for things like very delicate sauces so I can yank them off the heat and keep them from curdling or burning. A thicker copper pan changes temperature more slowly, and once it’s hot it hangs onto that heat. I want that steady heat for the majority of my cooking — browning meat and sautéing vegetables.

Interestingly, copper does not confer a benefit for heating water. The cooking performance of a copper pot filled with water isn’t affected much by the properties of the copper, but instead by the water within it. A pot filled with water will heat up and cool down about the same whether it’s made of copper, steel, aluminum, or iron. So from a cooking perspective, it’s not worth buying an all-copper stockpot — buy and use one if it makes you happy (and I do!) but don’t expect it to heat your stock any better!

As for collectible copper, thicker copper is generally more desirable. I have a lot more to say about this at How I define collectibility.

Can a copper pot be too thick?

In my opinion, yes, when it gets to be too heavy for you to manage. I have a number of restaurant-grade pieces that are really big and really heavy — 15 pounds or more when empty. In a big commercial kitchen, a pot like this would spend the whole evening on the cooktop and when it was time to clean it up there were plenty of strong-armed men to haul it around. But realistically, I may never use mine for cooking. (My heaviest pot weighs 40 pounds and I use it for firewood.)

What are some of the downsides to vintage French copper?

When people complain about it, here are some of the things they complain about. (I’m not going to go into the counterpoints here — that’s what the rest of the site is for!)

  • It’s expensive to buy. Bearing in mind that “expensive” is a subjective judgement, copper pots and pans cost more than pans made from other materials.
  • It’s also expensive to ship. When you buy a pot on Etsy or eBay, expect at least an additional US$30 for shipping, up to US$100 or more for a big piece. (And “free shipping” is never free but rather integrated into the purchase price.) You’ll also pay similar rates when you send your pots off for retinning.
  • It’s too heavy for cooking. Copper is a dense metal. My 30cm aluminum stewpot weighs 5 pounds, while the same stewpot in copper weighs 15 pounds. You will need more arm and hand strength to move copper pots and pans around than you’ll need for other types of cookware.
  • You can’t cook at very high heat with tin-lined copper. Tin’s melting point is 450°F (232°C), a temperature that most kitchen cooktops can induce within a few minutes. If you cook with a tin-lined pan on High, you could very well bring the surface of the pan to the point where the tin smears or forms bubbles.
  • Retinning is a nuisance. Tin-lined pans need to have their lining renewed when it wears out, which means taking (or shipping) the pan to a retinner and waiting a few weeks for its return. This costs money and also downtime for the pan. You can greatly prolong the life of a tin lining but you cannot change the fact that it will wear away over use.
  • Shiny copper is high-maintenance. In addition to taking care of the inside of the pot, there’s also the issue of inevitable tarnish on the exterior. If you want to maintain the shine and bright copper tone, you will need to clean the tarnish off periodically.

2. About tin-lined copper

Why are vintage French copper pots and pans lined with tin?

Copper in direct contact with certain food acids at cooking temperatures can produce chemical compounds that are mildly toxic — consumed at quantity, they can make you sick to your stomach. To prevent this, copper needs to be shielded from direct contact with food, ideally with a substance that won’t get in the way of the heat transfer from the pan into the food. To our great good fortune, tin happens to be a handy substance for this: it can be found in natural deposits, it transfers heat quite well, and it melts at a reasonable temperature (450°F or 232°C). Metallurgists figured this out in antiquity and tin has been the most commonly applied lining for copper cookware up until the 1970s, when they developed industrial techniques to bond copper to stainless steel, nickel, and aluminum.

You can find unlined French copper cookware, but these are specialty tools for cooking with food that doesn’t react with copper to produce the harmful compounds. (A short list: Beating egg whites; melting sugar for confectionary; and boiling fruit mixed with sugar to produce jam.) That’s why copper mixing bowls, confectionary sugar melters, and jam pans don’t have a silvery lining. But everyday pots and pans — saucepans, skillets, sauté pans, stewpots, stockpots, and so forth — need to be lined.

Why aren’t copper pots lined with tin any more?

Well, some of them still are — you can buy brand-new tin-lined copper from Mauviel, Brooklyn Copper Cookware, Duparquet, House Copper, and Rameria Mazzetti, to name a few.

But tin is not a perfect material. It’s a soft metal, so you can scrape tin away if you go at it with a scrub sponge and an abrasive cleaner like Comet, Bar Keeper’s Friend, Bon Ami, or Soft Scrub. (That’s also why you should never use metal utensils in a tin-lined pan.) Another issue with tin is that it begins to melt at 450°F (232°C), which means it’s not best suited to broiling and high-heat searing.

The majority of modern-era copper cookware is lined with stainless steel instead of tin because steel stands up better to high-heat cooking and rough cleaning. But stainless steel is not a perfect lining material either — it’s “sticky,” meaning that food tends to adhere to it when you cook. And steel-lined copper pots and pans top out at 2.5mm of total thickness, which means you’re missing out on the qualities of thick copper that’s 3mm thick or more.

How are pans retinned?

The process entails removing as much of the old tin as possible and re-applying a layer of molten tin. This takes intense heat, specialty tools and chemicals, protective gear, and skill. Most importantly, the tin needs to be exceptionally pure — 99% pure or better — to be “food-grade” as a cooking surface.

How do I know if my pan needs to be retinned?

In my experience, tin wears out in two ways.

First, it can physically wear down to the point where you can see streaks or spots of copper. (Bear in mind that modern dishwashing soap wasn’t invented until the mid-20th century; prior to that, copper pots and pans were scoured with sand to clean them — no wonder they were retinned every few months!) The advice I give (and that many other copper sites repeat) is to avoid scrubbing your tin-lined copper with abrasive sponges and cleaners so as to preserve the tin for as long as possible. (See Caring for vintage copper for lots more on this.) A little chip of copper showing here and there is not a big deal, and location matters — exposed copper high on the sidewalls of the pan is not likely to come into contact with food. But when the exposed copper over the entire cooking surface of the pan adds up to a square inch or so, it’s time to retin.

The second way tins wears out is when it has been unused for some time — like, years — and has built up an unattractive (but harmless) layer of oxidation that looks like dark, rough, dusty-looking splotches. You can scrub this off with an abrasive but you might also scrape right through the remaining tin to the copper underneath. In my opinion, you’re better off having an old splotchy tin lining replaced before you start using it, because cleaning it off might wear the lining away to the point where it needs retinning anyway.

When I buy a pot online, I have my own decision process about whether or not a pan needs retinning and my experience might help inform you.

Do pans lined with nickel, steel, or aluminum need to be relined?

Steel and aluminum don’t wear through like tin. Nickel is much harder than tin but can still be worn through if you scrub it hard or scratch it.

However, steel- and aluminum-lined pans can fail, and if they do, they can’t be fixed. The steel or aluminum is bonded to the copper but if the layers separate (or “delaminate”) from each other for any reason, the pan is ruined. A steel or aluminum lining can also be pitted by contact with salt, producing pinprick holes that can penetrate through to the copper and weaken the bond between the layers.

A nickel lining is electroplated or sprayed on the copper pan body and so there’s no risk of it peeling away. If the nickel were to be scratched away somehow, it could theoretically be re-electroplated or sprayed, but it’s probably more practical to reline it with tin instead.

Can I retin a pan at home?

Yes, but the heat and chemicals involved are dangerous and it takes skill and practice to apply the tin in an even layer. The differences between a professionally lined pan and one done by an amateur are immediately apparent: while any hand-wiped tin lining will always have slight swirl marks and other imperfections, a badly-done lining will be thick, uneven, drippy, and bumpy. If you hope to use a pan for cooking or plan to sell it or give it away, my recommendation is to have it lined by an experienced professional.

Why is retinning so expensive?

In my experience, there are a couple factors in play.

  • Cost of services: Each retinner has a formula for the cost of preparing and relining the pan. Retinners will also fix dents, tighten rivets, and address other problems, which can add repair costs.
  • Shipping charges: Copper pans are heavy and need to be packed securely, increasing the cost of shipping them to the retinner and back.

You can find ways to economize on the shipping, but I would recommend against trying to cut corners on the retinning itself. I did once, and it didn’t work out.

Can I avoid having to retin my copper?

No, you can’t avoid it completely, but you can certainly prolong the life of the tin on your pots. I’ve put together a post on how I use and clean my tin-lined copper with the common-sense things I do that are working for me.

3. Buying vintage copper

Are all old French copper pots and pans potentially valuable?

In my opinion, no, not all of them are. I think vintage French copper is like vintage cars: some old cars are incredibly valuable even in a dilapidated state, while others have outlived their usefulness and are, unfortunately, junk. Distinguishing one from the other comes down to objective common sense as well as subjective perceptions of beauty and value. Some common-sense factors include the thickness of the copper, the physical condition of the pot, and its provenance — if it was made by a well-known maker, owned by someone famous, or used at a well-known restaurant. Some subjective factors might be things like perceived rarity, aesthetic appeal, and usefulness.

This is a really interesting topic for me, and I have a whole page on it called How I define collectibility.

What’s the best way to figure out what a piece of vintage French copper is worth?

Search eBay and Etsy to get a feel for the prices of comparable pieces. In my experience, antique dealers tend to have high prices that aren’t representative of true market value.

Factors that increase objective value are high copper thickness, good to excellent physical condition, and interesting history or provenance. It’s pretty routine to see an unrestored saucepan with a Gaillard or Jacquotot stamp listed and selling for twice the price of an unstamped but restored saucepan of the exact same dimensions and quality.

I have more on this in an article called “What’s this worth?”

What’s the best way to start buying vintage French copper?

I’ve bought a lot of vintage copper from a variety of sources and the single most important piece of advice I have for you is to know yourself. Why are you interested in this stuff? Do you want to cook with it? Do you want to collect it? Do you want to decorate your house with it? Think through not only how much you want to spend, but what level of use you can expect at the price point you have in mind. Thin copper is much less expensive than thick copper and can be just as beautiful for display, but it will perform quite differently on the cooktop. Is your budget in line with your expectations?

When you’re ready to buy, start with some buyer protection: that is, buy within marketplaces like eBay and Etsy that have defined procedures for mediating between buyers and sellers in the case of a problem. Using PayPal for payment also adds their Purchase Protection to the transaction. These services add fees to the transaction but you and the seller have a mechanism to resolve disputes and enforce guarantees.

Some eBay and Etsy sellers are copper dealers or retinners who also operate their own standalone online stores. I would feel comfortable buying through the independent online store of a seller with a good track record on eBay or Etsy, but I still encourage you to use PayPal for payment.

I have heard some disappointing stories of purchases from pop-up Instagram stores and other “lifestyle” sellers who are excellent at photographing and presenting copper that turns out to be of lower quality than expected. Outside of the buyer protection structures of eBay, Etsy, and PayPal, there is little a buyer can do if the copper was misrepresented. Until you develop a good eye for copper and some trust relationships with sellers, I recommend staying within regulated marketplaces that can mediate a dispute.

For my specific endorsement of sellers I like, please see Where I buy copper. (As always, my endorsements are based on my own experiences buying copper from them, and I’m not compensated in any way.)

What mistakes do beginner buyers make?

Here are some of the issues I’ve experienced myself and that I’ve heard about from others.

  • Don’t assume that a listing for a “thick” or “heavy” piece of copper means that it is special. Those words don’t mean anything. Focus on the measured thickness of the piece, know the difference between the grades of thickness, and if the seller can’t measure the pan’s thickness for you, use the piece’s weight to estimate what the thickness will be.
  • Not all “antique French copper” is French or antique. I often see lesser quality pieces made in Portugal or Asia described as French, and it seems that anything with a little tarnish on it suddenly becomes a valuable heirloom. Use the examples on this site to learn about the makers and their stamps, and for pieces that aren’t marked, develop your own eye for the French (and non-French!) aesthetic that denotes high-quality copper.
  • Be very careful buying mixed “job lots” of copper in the hopes that there are hidden high-value gems there. My experience is that the items at auction clearinghouses have already been picked over, and pieces shown in fuzzy unfocused photos often turn out to be thin decorative-grade items. Buying this way is a quick method to accumulate a lot of items that you won’t want to use and can’t resell.
  • Be wary of the lure of “beautiful but useless” antique or vintage copper. By this I mean, useless for you — whether you want to cook or collect or both, you need to be discerning about what qualities are necessary to suit your purposes or risk wasting money on temptations. For me, cooking with copper means prioritizing the thickness and physical condition of pieces, and making buying decisions based on the size of my household and cooking style; likewise, my copper collecting prioritizes the visual appeal and provenance of pieces, and I make buying decisions based on my growing appreciation for craftsmanship, rarity, and certain eras and makers. The time you take now to think through what you’re looking for, what those goals suggest should be your priorities, and what criteria you need to have for your purchases will end up saving you money and frustration.

What piece of copper should I buy first?

Okay, previous paragraph aside, I know that sometimes you just want someone to tell you what to do. So, for your very first piece of copper, I suggest a sauté pan or rondeau, at least 2.5mm thick, tin-lined, 28cm to 30cm in diameter. That, in my opinion, is a you-can’t-go-wrong piece of French copper. (Here’s mine.)

I made a whole page on this topic called, appropriately, “What should I buy?”

4. Caring for copper

Do I have to polish copper?

No, you do not need to keep the outside of the pan bright and free of tarnish. You should wash and dry the pan inside and out after cooking with it, but as long as the copper is clean from grease, it’s perfectly fine to let it collect tarnish.

Can I put copper pans in the dishwasher?

No. I mean, yes of course you can, because it’s your pan and you can do whatever you like with it, but if you want to preserve its shine, you should not. The dishwashing process creates a chemical reaction that over time corrodes and dulls the copper. (In chemistry terms, the dishwashing detergent enables ion exchange between the copper and the metal of its lining and handles, which corrodes the copper.)

It’s better for the copper to wash pots and pans by hand.

Do I need anything special to wash copper?

You can use regular dish soap to wash copper pans after you cook with them, but make sure you use a non-scratch sponge to avoid scratching the copper (and if your pan is lined with tin, wearing off the soft lining).

What’s the best way to get tarnish off of copper?

You can use a commercial copper cleaner such as Bistro or Wright’s Copper Cleaner. It’s easiest to work at your kitchen sink, as you need to rinse and then wash the pot with soap and water afterwards. You can also use ketchup, lemon, and salt — I tested them and they work fine for light tarnish removal.

How can I keep my display copper clean and bright?

(By “display copper” I mean pieces that you don’t cook with frequently and that you like to keep out in view, so you want it to look shiny and pretty.)

Metal polish is a petroleum-based polish that leaves behind a very light coating that seals the copper from contact with the air. Apply metal polish in small dabs, rub it in circles until it thickens and darkens, and then wipe it away until the copper gleams. The thin protective layer left behind by the polish will wash away with soap and water, so I reserve polishing for pieces I don’t use very often so that I don’t need to re-polish them. I like Simichrome, Flitz Metal Polish, and Wenol, but there are many metal polish brands available.

I have more questions. Where can I learn more?

There is an entire section on the site called Caring for vintage copper that might be helpful.

What other questions would you like to see addressed here? Please contact me.