I was on the levonia map and walked to a fire place. I put a frying pan in the fire place and proceeded to add meat. I put in 4 pieces of mutton and when I went to add fat, the pan with all the meat just vanished! The fat returned to my inventory.

I tried building a fire in the fireplace to see if that would trigger it to return but it did not. It was the full sized fire place in a house, not the little wood burner but the actual large one with the rack in the middle.