The purpose of Nuremberg kitchens has usually been explained by dolls' house historians as meant to teach girls lessons in housekeeping and cooking. However, these model kitchens are probably better understood as meant to encourage girls to adopt traditionally gendered social roles by making housekeeping seem fascinating through the appeal of attractive and impressive playthings. It would have been much easier for mothers to teach their daughters how to cook by taking them to the real kitchens in their homes and having them observe and assist with preparing meals than to provide miniaturized counterparts. Also, given that these toy kitchens had layouts that were more aesthetic and theatrical than accurately representational of real kitchens in full scale houses, that they often evoked nostalgia as family antiques or as deliberately old-fashioned new products, and that they were often associated more with the festivities of Christmas than with the practicalities of everyday life, Nuremberg kitchens were probably not truly meant primarily to provide girls with practical training in the skills of homemaking. Instead, they were intended to generate wonder and amusement, to make kitchens seem magical, and thereby inspire girls to anticipate and desire their traditionally expected future roles as homemakers.