[Sca-cooks] hair sieve

[James Prescott]

At 19:58 +0000 2001-06-07, Olwen the Odd wrote:
> I ran across "hair sieve" in a recipe out of Robert de Nola, Libro de Coxina
> (Spanish 1525) for Poluora De Duque--Duke's Powder and wondering what a hair
> sieve was I went into my search engine and among other things came up with
> this from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook.  BYW Cindy is hair sieve in the
> glossery?   Olwen

D. Hartley, _Lost Country Life_, Pantheon (New York 1979) page 253
and 254 has:

"Sieves were made of long white [horse] tail-hairs, sewn over
parchment, stretched and secured by hoops of bent wood, tension
being obtained by expanding the hoops slightly after setting
the hairs."

"Sieves made of the horse hair were called _tamise_: we keep
the word today in the 'tammy cloth' used by cooks for straining
jellies, and so on."

She gives no dates or sources for these usages.


The OED does not give an English citation for 'tamis' that involves
hair, though the etymology includes "a. F. _tamis_ ... a sieve (of
wire, silk, hair, etc. (12th c. in Littré)".


The OED under 'strainer' has a 1707 citation reading "Pour it ...
into a Strainer of fine thin Linen, or of twisted Hair".

  Interesting digression: a 1533 citation reads "Item a strayner of
  golde for orenges".


The OED does not appear to have any citation under 'sieve' that
involves hair.


The OED has 'hair-sieve' and defines it as "A sieve with the
bottom made of hair finely woven; usually for straining liquid"
and gives citations from 1100, 1420 (_Liber Cocorum_), 1530,
1769, and 1894,


A. Rey, _Dictionnaire historique de la langue française_, Le Robert
(Paris 1992) has no mention of hair under 'tamis' or 'étamine'.


Thorvald