Saucepan

Saucepan

Noun · /ˈsɔːspən/ · a deep cooking pot with a long handle and usually a lid

Definition

A saucepan is a deep cylindrical cooking vessel with a flat base, straight or slightly flared sides, a long handle on one side, and usually a fitted lid. It is one of the most essential pieces of kitchen equipment, used for boiling, simmering, making sauces, heating soups, cooking grains, and a wide range of stovetop tasks. Saucepans come in a variety of sizes — small ones for melting butter or heating a single portion, large ones for boiling pasta or making stock — and in materials including stainless steel, aluminium, cast iron, and non-stick coated variants.

Origin

Saucepan is a compound of sauce (from Old French sausse, from Latin salsa, meaning salted — the same root as salt and salsa) and pan (Old English panne, a broad shallow cooking vessel, from a Germanic root). The compound entered English in the seventeenth century, specifically to describe a pan designed for making sauces. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the word had broadened to describe any small to medium deep cooking pot with a handle, regardless of what it was used to cook.