Why do Dutch Oven lids have little bumps all over the inside?

Corine
#1. February 12th, 2010, at 10:10 PM.

Your dutch oven is intended to perform a rudimentary self-basting operation. The vaporized liquid from the bottom of the dutch oven collects on the lid, and slides down the bumps to drip onto whatever you are cooking. Other dutch ovens have a smooth lid, as the lid was occasionally used upside-down as a sort of a griddle.
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Ronnette
#2. February 12th, 2010, at 10:40 PM.

The lid of a dutch oven collects evaporated steam from the food. Without those little stalagmites, that steam would all drip down the edges or evaporate away. They help distribute it evenly over your food.

For meats, that will continuously baste the food with its own juices without you having to open the lid (which would allow all of the heat to escape, especially bad if you’re cooking over a camp fire and all that heat lost means more firewood to gather and a longer time before you can eat.)

Not all Dutch ovens have them, so they’re probably not entirely necessary. But some people will even go so far as to put ice or water on top of the dutch oven to encourage that condensation to drip down onto the food for the basting effect.
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Jerrold
#3. February 12th, 2010, at 11:04 PM.

The comb of bumps on the inside of a dutch oven are to make sure that steam droplets fall evenly over the entire top of the casserole/cake/whatever you are cooking.

A usual domed lid, the water droplets collect and drop from two places… either from the very peak of the dome (which means there may be a puddle on top of or in the middle of your cake/casserole) or runs down the sides, which means you might end up with the cake/casserole not cooking evening along the edges. The honeycomb bumps make sure that the steam droplets drop evening across the whole top, and cannot collect in just one or two places in/on the food, since dutch ovens are not ment to be opened and stirred during cooking.
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