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In early Louisiana plantation houses, the kitchen was usually the heart of the home, even though it may have been completely separate from the main house. It was usually a small wooden or brick structure that was built away from the house because of the danger of fire and the intense heat that was generated while cooking three meals a day. This also reduced cooking odors and noise from the kitchen workers. The major problem with this arrangement was the transportation of food from the kitchen to the main house, especially during rainy seasons.

Open-hearth cookery in a fireplace required much preparation before the cooking actually began. Supplying only one hearth may take up to 25 cords of wood. Achieving a good bed of coals could take about an hour before small beds of coals could be raked onto the hearth or arranged in the fireplace for food items to be cooked in a variety of ways. Preparing the bake oven was a more complicated and longer process but was only done once a week. Cooking in an open hearth was a dangerous job for the women of yesteryear. Catching fire during cooking was a common problem and the cause of many deaths. Cooks working in demonstration plantation kitchens of today wear only cotton clothing, keep blankets on hand to smother fires and have pails of water ready at all times.

Open hearth cookery has become a subject of public interest. Cooking in this manner is a challenge, a pleasure and a fascinating link with earlier times.

The reproduction of a working kitchen of the early 1800s was completed in 1979 at Magnolia Mound Plantation. This addition has augmented the educational goals in depicting the culture, foodways and lifestyle of this period. Research in historical records, visits to other kitchens of the same period and use of old materials all contribute to its authentic appearance. Regular open-hearth cooking demonstrations, using recipes of the period and authentic cookware and methods, add life and color to the interpretive program.

Soon after the kitchen restoration was completed, research began on planning and installing an historic kitchen garden, as they were an important part of the economy of a plantation. Food, herbs and flowers were grown for everyday use by the inhabitants of a plantation. A typical kitchen garden that may have been seen on the plantation during the early 1800s was designed and planted close to the kitchen and is now included in educational tours and produce from the garden is used in the preparation of cooking demonstrations.
 
A pigeonnier or dovecote, found on Southern plantations, was used to hold nesting boxes for squab and various game birds. The structure of the pigeonnier appeared to have varied from square boxes with pyramidal roofs raised off the ground on posts to two-story towers with roosts above and storage space below. Some of the more elaborate examples were towers of more than 35 feet tall and hexagonal in shape.

On some plantations pigeons were a significant part of the diet. The pigeonnier was once noted as a universal appendage of a sugar planter's house in parts of early Louisiana.

An interesting "receipt" for pigeon suggests:  Take 8 pigeons, new killed, cut them in small pieces and put them in a stew pan with a pint of claret and a pint of water. Season your pigeons with salt and pepper, a blade or two of mace, an onion, a bunch of sweet herbs, a good piece of butter just rolled in a very little flour; cover it close and let them stew until there is just enough for sauce, and then take out the onion and sweet herbs and beat the yolk of three eggs, grate half a nutmeg and with your spoon push the meat all to one side of the pan and the gravy to the other, and stir in the eggs; keep them stirring for fear of turning curds, and when the sauce is fine and think shake all together, and then put them into the dish, pour the sauce over it, and ready some slices of bacon toasted and fried oysters, throw the oysters all over and lay the bacon.  Butler Papers.

From The Magnolia Mound Plantation Kitchen Book: Being a Compendium of Foodways and Customs of Early Louisiana 1795 - 1841. p.26.

The pigeonnier on Magnolia Mound Plantation, Ca. 1825, was donated by the Barthel family and moved from the family property in Sunshine, Louisiana to Magnolia Mound in 1982 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
 
Many plantations across the South seek only to demonstrate how plantation owners and their families lived during the 18th and 19th centuries. At Magnolia Mound Plantation, several venues are offered to educate the public as to how slaves lived day to day during this tumultuous time in American history.

An 1830s slave cabin that was originally part of the Cherie Quarters on Riverlake Plantation is now a part of the plantation site. At one time Magnolia Mound Plantation had slave quarters consisting of 16 cabins with 50 slaves. Visitors are able to experience a closer look at the home life of enslaved men, women and children. Inside the cabin is a poignant setting of a slave family's sparsely furnished one-room abode. An interactive exhibit entitled "A Peculiar Institution: An Exhibit of Slavery in the South," includes captivating songs of the slaves and pictures and artifacts that depict the journey of slaves from Africa, their lives on the plantation and their dreams of freedom. Plantation documents list the names of many of the slaves and their family members who worked the fields of tobacco, indigo, sugar cane and cotton.

Students who visit the plantation on school trips have the opportunity to take part in a program entitled "A Day in the Life of a Slave." In addition to studying the exhibit in the slave cabin, the students learn why slavery existed in America, about the economic history of the region and what daily hardships slaves endured on the plantation. A variety of daily chores are assigned to participating students who then take part in doing only some of the jobs that slaves did every day, such as laundry, grinding corn, deseeding and carding cotton, making bousillage, feeding birds and gathering wood.

Through these programs offered to all age groups, Magnolia Mound strives to shed light on the much maligned and often ignored population of the plantation. With research projects underway and constant investigation of cutting edge scholarly publications, Magnolia Mound Plantation is proud to dedicate resources to the body of knowledge surrounding slave life.
 
The Overseer's House at Magnolia Mound Plantation was first documented on a map of the site dated 1880. The house was located on Vermont Street in a nearby neighborhood which was once part of the plantation, donated to Magnolia Mound by the owner and moved to the current Magnolia Mound site in 1977. The house is double-sided and original to the plantation, Ca. 1870. It is furnished as if the overseer and his family are still living there and includes an early 19th century sick room. The house is significant not only for its age but its rarity in being the last remaining dependency of the plantation and is list on the National Register of Historic Places.

A descendant of slaves, Mrs. Susie Martin White, born in 1894, lived in the house until she died in the 1970s. The house was unoccupied for many years until it was moved and refurbished to become an integral part of the plantation site.

Cherrie Williams, granddaughter of Mrs. White, attended elementary school nearby and visited her "Mama Susie" frequently at the "Old House."

Ms. Williams recalls, "....in the winter Mama Susie mixing up the wheat paste on the stove that she used for applying the newspaper to the weathered walls to keep the chilly air out and the warmth of the fireplace in. I would watch as she sat in her rocking chair with her tobacco pipe, singing hymns and praying softly, and weaving pieces of scraps together to make quilts, aprons, hand made dolls and doll clothes.Who would have known that the house where I received such comfort and warmth from my inspirational grandmother dated back to 1870? The house rested in the shade of low hanging trees that kept it dark and cool. But perhaps the shades of yesteryear were what created the spooking night images I remember."

"It is now a part of history known as the Overseer's House. But I know it as the 'fun house' where the aroma fresh Indian fry bread, slow cooked beans and rice, farm fed smothered poultry, and garden fresh mustard greens permeated the rooms; where I took turns churning fresh vanilla ice cream to go with her homemade jelly cakes......and where I watched her concoct her natural remedies and teas from herbs and bark. This is where I learned to be very creative, an artist, while I watched Mama Susie sit, sing and weave pieces together and give away for gifts."