Block of the Month: Cauldron

Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble

What are the ingredients that you’d mix together to make Minecraft? Mining and crafting are the basics, obviously. A big helping of exploration. A dash of building, and a sprinkle of combat. Pinches of farming and trading. Perhaps even a soupçon of enchanting and automation.

If that’s that recipe, then surely all we need to do is boil those ingredients up into some kind of suspicious stew. And there’s only one way I know how to do that - we’ll need our block of the week, the cauldron.

Cauldrons were first released in the Adventure Update in November 2011. They hold liquids of different kinds – water, lava, potions, and even powder snow. They also act as the job site block for leatherworker villagers.

A cauldron can be easily crafted with a U-shape made of seven iron ingots in a crafting bench, but they can also be found in the world. Swamp huts, where witches live, always spawn with one, but you’ll also happen across them in igloos, village tanneries, trail ruins and woodland mansions.

To use one, hit the use button while holding a bucket of your desired liquid and aiming at the cauldron and it’ll fill up – though be aware that it won’t work with milk. Probably because it’s a well-known fact that cauldrons are lactose intolerant. You can empty the cauldron of its contents again by using an empty bucket on it.

In Bedrock Edition, cauldrons can also hold dyed water. To do this, use dye on a cauldron filled with regular water. Dyed water can then be used to dye leather armor, leather horse armor, and wolf armor to the color of the water. Using the dyed armor on a cauldron full of undyed water will wash it clean again.

Oh, and potions too! Bedrock Edition cauldrons can be filled with potions from glass bottles. You can use this for potion storage. But if you use a stack of arrows on a cauldron filled with a potion, the arrows will become tipped arrows with that potion effect, so that’s handy too.

Image credit: J.H. Tarbell // Public Domain

The word “cauldron” was first seen in English in the 13th century, borrowed from the French “chaudron”, which in turn comes from the Latin “caldārium”, meaning “hot bath”. Interestingly, the French word replaced the Old English word “ċetel”, which shares an origin with “kettle”, which came from the Old Norse language.

Outside of Minecraft, the first cauldrons originated in the late Bronze Age period and were long used for cooking. They’re rarely used in this way in richer countries today and are instead connected to witchcraft and folklore. Like in Minecraft, witches are said to brew potions in a cauldron, though in Irish folklore it’s instead where leprechauns keep their treasure

You could go looking for treasure in cauldrons in Minecraft if you want to spend a lot of time finding nothing. I recommend looking in chests instead. Otherwise you’ll just be boiling over with disappointment.