Types
Daubières, braisières, and cocottes
These are rectangular or oval pots with well-fitting lids intended for cooking braises or stews.
Fish poachers
A poissonière is for larger fish like salmon, while a truitière is for smaller fish such as trout.
Gratins
A gratin is wide and shallow, round or oval, with stick, loop, or ring handles.
Rondeaux and plats à sauter
A round pan that is wider than it is tall with two loop handles mounted on the sides. A plat à sauter has the same shallow proportions as a sauté pan, while a rondeau is a few centimeters taller than the equivalent sauté.
Saucepans
In French they’re called casseroles or russes.
Sauté
A round pan that is wider than it is tall and fitted with a stick handle. The sauté pan got its name from the French verb sauter, to jump— that is, to agitate the pan so that the food turns over and mixes with oils and flavorings and cooks evenly.
Skillets
Often called poêle in French.
Soup pots
A cylindrical pot with side handles that is taller than it is wide. The tall narrow shape helps heat liquid without exposing too much surface area that would evaporate moisture.
Stewpots
A cylindrical pot with side handles that is about half as tall as it is wide, so that from the side it looks almost rectangular.
Stockpots
A cylindrical pot with side handles that is as tall as it is wide.
Windsors and sauteuses bombées
These are conical or bowl-shaped pans with stick handles.
Stamps and makers
By era
Collections
Behemoths
The really big guys — 36cm (14 inches) diameter or more.
Historical interest
Some of my pots and pans have stamps that reveal an interesting story, and writing about them gave me a chance to learn about them.
Not copper
I feature a few things that aren’t actually made of copper.
Working pans
A lot of my writeups are on pans fresh from restoration — and they look fabulous. But I use my copper pans too. These are pans I really love and cook with regularly, so you can see what copper in frequent use looks like.
Other countries of origin
This site began as a showcase for French copper, but there are many more makers out there. Here are posts about copper from Germany, England, Belgium, Spain… and more to come!
Guest posts and showcases
These are posts about copper that belong to readers of the site. A “guest post” is written by a reader, while a “guest showcase” is written by me.
