saucepan

thumb|Copper saucepan without lid thumb|right|Saucepan with a lid A saucepan is one of the basic forms of cookware (not technically a pan), in the form of a round cooking vessel, typically deep, and wide enough to hold at least of water, with sizes typically ranging up to , and having a long handle protruding from the vessel. The saucepan can be differentiated from the saucepot by the fact that "a saucepan is a cooking utensil with one handle; a saucepot is equipped with two side handles". Unlike cooking pans, a saucepan is usually not engineered to have non-stick surface. This is so that it can be used in deglazing, a process by which food stuck to the surface of the pan from cooking is recooked with liquid and other ingredients to form a sauce.

==History== A predecessor of the saucepan, preceding the wider use of metal cookware in the late Middle Ages, was the pipkin, an earthenware cooking pot used for cooking over direct heat from coals or a wood fire. They were not held in direct flame which would crack the ceramic. It has a handle and many (though not all) examples had three feet. Late medieval and post-medieval pipkins had a hollow handle into which a stick might be inserted for manipulation. Examples exist unglazed, fully glazed, and glazed only on the interior. While often spheroidal, they were made with straight outwardly-sloping sides. In early modern Europe, saucepans "had small iron trivets, or stands, so that they could be pushed into the hot ashes" for cooking.