[Sca-cooks] Period Knife Techniques (consensus??)

[Chris Stanifer]

Hello, Listies!

I was taking a peek through a few recipe sources this
morning, and started to wonder if we had any
reference/consensus as to how the various "hew, chop,
and cut" indications might translate into modern
culinary terminology.  Meaning, have we been able to
determine if "hew it into pieces" refers to a
particular size of cut (small dice, julienne,
concasse), or if it is a particularly generalized
terminology. Or, is this a non-issue?

It seems to me that, for the newcomer (like me), it
would be helpful to know what others have done when
redacting recipes, and how it has worked out for them.
 For a good number of the recipes I have seen, it is
difficult to determine, by a casual glance at the
recipe, which cut would be best suited to the dish,
because the end result is often so "foreign" to the
modern cook.  Some of the recipes, of course, are
fairly obvious (in the case of roasts, in particular),
but others (pottages, brouets, tagines, etc) are not
so readily apparent.

Anyway, I was just pondering this, and thought I'd
propose it to the list for discussion.  If it has
already been covered, pardon the redundancy.

Balthazar of Blackmoor

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Words are Trains for moving past what really has no name...

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