Why copper, still

When my grandfather died in 2018 he left me a copper saucepan. It had been bought in 1962, used by his mother, my mother, and him. The tin lining had been replaced twice. The brass handle still rivets to the body the way it did the day it was hammered.

That pan is the reason Marsalforn Home sells copper cookware.

Copper is the most thermally responsive metal in a domestic kitchen — it heats faster than any pan you can buy at any price. That responsiveness is why French restaurant kitchens switched to copper in the 17th century and why Michelin kitchens haven't switched away. You set the hob to 4, the pan is at the right temperature in 30 seconds, you turn the hob off, the pan stops cooking. It's the closest thing a domestic cook gets to the precision of a chef's induction range.

The trade-off is care. Copper hates the dishwasher. Copper hates being left to simmer tomato sauce overnight. Copper requires re-tinning every 5 to 30 years (mostly closer to 30 if you don't scrub the lining). And copper is expensive: a 24cm sauté is €310. A serviceable steel one is €40.

The maths only works if you keep it. We have customers using our pans daily who bought them five years ago. The same pan, properly cared for, will outlast every pan most cooks buy in their lifetime.

If you're going to buy one piece, the 24cm sauté is the right one. Sauces, two-egg pan-poaches, sole fillets, ragùs slow-cooked at low temperature. If you have one copper pan, that's the one.

Mateo