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

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Bonne of Traquair wrote:
>
> >  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.
>
> Perhaps the issue here is that you, as a professional, have a larger
> vocabulary of cut styles/sizes.  I pretty much have two sizes of cut:
> bite-sized or smaller that bite-sized, with the style dictated by my idea of
> the pleasantist appearance in my view of the finished dish, and/or relative
> cooking needs of each item.
>
> Usually, I read the recipe over and over, track down similar recipes a
> little older or newer than the one in question to also read over and over,
> noting additional details (if any) and in a sense, 'cook in my head' quite a
> few times before actually hitting the kitchen.  Over the course of all that,
> this sort of problem sort of solves itself and I doubt that I've conistently
> reacted to the same word in different recipes/for different items.
>
> I form my idea of what size based on the relative wet/dryness of what I
> expect the finished dish to be and how I expect to get there.  Do the bits
> cook altogether, or get added in sequence or processed through multiple
> pre-cooks and finally put together? Do I expect to make the dish up as
> individual servings or in a big container?  Will it all be mashed or pureed
> in the end or left as pieces?  Should the bits be small enough to spoon up,
> or large enough to be gracefully eaten by hand?  Small enough that a
> mouthful has multiples of various items, or large enough that a mouthful is
> a single item?
>
> This is an important question you've come up with.  I've been working with
> what I hope is informed instinct.  I'm interested in what others are doing.
>
> bonne

This appears to be a sensible approach to the question. Let's see, now.

Off the top of my head, recipes seem to fall into categories by the size
of some of the ingredients.

We have recipes [at least ones in English] calling for poultry, or
sometimes piglets, to be "broken" into quarters, or members. I wonder if
this involves cutting or simply tearing a parboiled critter apart. Or,
it may involve a cleaver.

Slightly smaller would be foods "hacked", "schopped", or "hewn" into
gobbets. I'd say intuitively that a gobbet may be a largeish, but still
more or less mouth-sized piece.

Leches, or slices (note that a slice is, in period parlance, usually a
tool like a spatula; it may be used to slice and convey things as well,
like the silver fish slice that used to be an unimaginative but common
wedding gift in England) may described as thin, broad as a hand, or
narrow, presumably strips or half-slices.

Then there is the act of teasing cooked meat apart into shreds or
threads, I assume along the grain. I also suspect this is often done by
hand, like pulled barbecue. I've used a knife for fine, grain-length
julienne of cold meats for adding to dishes like blankmanger. Sue me ;
) .

I'm also pretty sure there are recipes that call for foods to be chopped
all to dust, or all to powder, with or without a final grind in a mortar
or through a sieve.

I suspect there's a slightly different aesthetic involved, which is not
to say this food is less aesthetically pleasing: I find some Chinese
sub-cuisines to be perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing (in
appearance, anyway) cuisines on Earth, and chopping meats, bones and
all, into hunks with a cleaver for service is an extremely common practice.

That is, when they're not boning out chicken wing tips or frogs' legs to
stuff with fine julienne of smoked ham ;  )

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com