If we are to believe comic strip lore, American housewives wield two classical weapons against their misbehaving husbands:  one is the rolling pin, and the other the frying pan.  Blondie, the long-suffering wife of the Chic Young’s Blondie and Dagwood was frequently seen pursuing her remiss husband with the former; the latter was even once used to whack the head of a Mexican soap opera villain who was intent on murdering the heroine of the show. (Hmmm. . .or would that be the maid who laid the villain out cold on the kitchen floor in one fell blow?)  Anyway, if you are familiar with only enamel and light-weight frying pans, such a blow would in itself seem a joke--hardly lethal, right?

Wrong.  The standard frying pan (or “skillet” as cooking books seem to prefer to say) of former times—the prototype for these comic representations-- was typically made of cast iron. A large one might weigh about 6 pounds. Such were the cooking utensils of my mid-century childhood home in Erie, Pennsylvania.  The heft of the larger pans and Dutch ovens included in sets of cast iron cookware would at least partly explain the muscular arms of housewives—some of whom used them to powerfully brandish wooden kitchen spoons against erring children. 

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