The only pantries, alas, are Bilbo’s.
- 01.002 cellars, pantries (lots of these),
- 01.022 as he went to the pantry.
- 01.036 and then to a pantry
- 01.057 as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries.
- 01.065 Pour the milk on the pantry floor!
- 08.074 with its beautiful pantries.
words that you were saying 
And parallel to “larder”, should clearly be where one keeps one’s pants.
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SarahTheEntwife, you make a clear and cogent point! Thank you for leading me on a delightful adventure over morning coffee. Apparently, the pantry is where the panter stores his pain. “Panter” = the household staff person in charge of bread and the lovely obsolete word “pain in the second meaning” = bread, because intrusion of French across the Channel. The panter has charge of the pantry as the butler has charge of the buttery. Which I had always thought was full of butter, but no, it’s full of bottles. The launderess has charge of the laundry. The “dey” has charge of the dairy, I just learned; the “dey” is a lovely Old English derived word for “the gal who milks the cows” from broader meaning “female servant” which trundled over from the Gothic verb “deigan” and a narrower meaning “knead” and from which through a different path we get “dough”. It may be time for buttered toast.
Also, I now have an inquiry out to the good folks at McNamara Dairy in Plainfield, NH to see if there is a traditional job title for the person in charge of the creamery.
“buttery, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.
“dairy, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.
“dey, n.1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.
“pain, n.2.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.
“panter, n.2.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.
“pantry, n.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.
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When I think of “cellar”, the other place one might keep food, I think “down”, “cool”, “stone”, “earth”, “wine”, “barrels”, “casks”, and large quantities. Longer-term, less-accessible storage.
When I think of “pantry”, I think, “nearby”, “wood”, “warm”, “shelves”, “small”, “neat”, “tins”. (Also, except in the Hobbit, I cannot recall ever seeing a mention of “pantries” in one location, only as a general reference to typical pantries, or most people’s pantries, or the like. Bilbo is the only person I know of who had multiple pantries in the same dwelling.)
At any rate, if I were looking to evoke homey images, I would certainly choose “pantry” over “cellar”, and “pantries” simply pushes the point father, possibly to the point of amusingly fantastical exaggeration.
Grace
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[…] Cut the cloth and tread on the fat! Pour the milk on the pantry floor! Leave the bones on the bedroom mat! Splash the wine on every […]
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