I don't think what you describe has been a component in any of the classic dungeons I can think of. This sort of thing is not found in White Plume Mountain. Not in the ToH. I don't recall it being a big part of KotB (the part of that I recall best is the shrine to chaos, and I don't think they have a kitchen). It's not generally part of the less-classic dungeons I know that are from the heyday of OD&D (eg the early White Dwarf ones).
I think dungeons work better when the clues and inferences are self-contained. Eg
in the first dungeon that I designed for Torchbearer, one of the room had been the forging room for the (former) Dwarven occupant. There were leather hangings across the passageway between it and another room. The PCs investigated those hangings, and noted the smoke that had accreted on one side of them. But they didn't go into the room. Later on, after they had explored a (non-forged-based) workroom, one of the players worked out that the other room, that produced smoke, must be the forge room!
The reasoning was based on elements within the dungeon, rather than bringing in considerations of "realism" which may not be shared between players and GM.