Stillrooms were used to make products as varied as candles, furniture polish, and soap; distillery was only one of the tasks carried out there.
As practical skills fell out of fashion for high-born women, the still room became the province of poor dependent relations.
[3] Other products included pickled vegetables and fruit, laundry recipes, remedies, and perfumes,[4] and home-brewed beer or wine was often made.
Herbs and flowers from the kitchen garden and surrounding countryside were preserved for flavoring food and processed tinctures, distillates, and syrups.
[5][better source needed] Other products included ointments, soaps, furniture polishes, and a wide variety of medicines.
Stillroom recipes were more commonly written down (along with other information, like general food recipes, family medical histories, unit conversion tables, and encyclopedic lists, often all in the same book), by women and men of the houhold, including nobility and some literate servants, and bequeathed.
Central in the still room would be a gas or electric water boiler and separate coffee brewers.