[Sca-cooks] pantler knife/chaffer knife

[Stephen Bloch]

Following is a brief but, perhaps, enlightening expedition through 
historical sources and their inexact copying of one another.

>Now I know that a panter is a varient of pantler.
>And a pantler is the officer of a household in
>charge of bread.  The parer and trencher knives,
>to me, are self-evident.  That we are stuck on
>is the chaffer knife and what it is supposed to
>do.

Pulling out my Falconwood reprint of Furnivall's collection "The Boke 
of Nurture"...
John Russell writes in his Boke of Nurture (written between 
1430-1470), in the section on the duties of a Panter:

"Thow must haue iij. knyffes kene
in pantry, y sey the, euermare :
On knyfe the loves to choppe, anothere them for to pare,
the iij. sharpe & kene to smothe the trenchurs and square.
alwey they soueraynes bred thow choppe, & that it be newe & able;
se alle ether bred a day old or thou choppe to the table;
alle howsold bred iij. dayes old so it is profitable;
and trencher bred iiij. dayes is convenyent & agreable."
(Russell then goes on to discuss salt-cellars and an ivory 
salt-planer of dimensions 2" x 3".)

The Boke of Kervynge (printed by Wynkyn de Worde, either 1508 or 
1513) is largely a prose copy of Russell; its version of the 
corresponding section reads

"... ye muste haue thre pantry knyues
one knyfe to square trenchoure loues
an other to be a chyppere
the thyrde shall be sharpe to make smothe trenchoures
than chyppe your soueraynes brede hote, and all other brede let it be 
a daye olde
housholde brede three dayes olde
trenchour brede foure dayes olde"
(Wynkyn de Worde then goes on to discuss salt-cellars and an ivory 
salt-planer of dimensions 2" x 3".)

>I have Yahood and Googled chaffer and pantler
>and knife in various combinations, but have
>only come up with one website which used
>chaffer and knife in a mediaval context and it
>apparently references "Fabulous Feasts".  After
>twitching a lot, I actually got up and looked
>for my copy, but haven't been able to find it.
>I am sure it is somewhere, but having not looked
>at it in 20+ years, I am not sure where it is
>anymore.

See pp. 28-29: Cosman (in 1976) writes

" [The Panter] used three knives at his own breadboard: a chaffer for 
large loaves, a parer, and a trencher knife for smoothing the edges 
of the specially sliced bread that served as platters....  The 
Panter's fourth knife, the mensal knife, cut the choice "upper crust" 
from rolls and breads for presentation to the master....  Bread baked 
the day of service was for the lord alone; from the pantry other 
guests received day-old bread; the household, three-days' bread, and 
for their trenchers, bread four days old."
(Cosman then goes on to discuss salt-cellars and an ivory salt-planer 
of dimensions 2" x 3".)

BTW, _Fabulous Feasts_ may be a terrible cooking source, but it's 
actually pretty good for illustrations of costumes and table-setting, 
since the illustrations (unlike the recipes) are well cited.

>http://sjaqua.tripod.com/scan000013.gif
>
>They are listed as being "Three knives of the
>Panter - chaffer, parer and trencher knives".

The picture at the above URL is scanned from p. 57 of the 1986 Museum 
of London "Knives and Scabbards" volume.  The accompanying text (p. 
56) says

"The Panter had no fewer than four particular knives: the chaffer, 
for large loaves; the parer; the trencher knife for smoothing edges; 
and the mensal knife, reserved for removing the select upper crust 
for its presentation to the lord."
(The Museum of London book does NOT immediately then go on to discuss 
salt-cellars and an ivory salt-planer of dimensions 2" x 3" :-) but 
its wording is so similar to Cosman's that I suspect it may be copied 
from _Fabulous Feasts_, which is cited in the bibliography for that 
chapter, rather than independently documented.


Note the changes from source to successive source: Russell says the 
knife in question "loves to choppe"; Wynkyn spells it "chyppere"; 
Cosman and MoL call it a "chaffer" (although where Cosman gets this 
term is, like so much in _Fabulous Feasts_, utterly undocumented). 
Russell describes the trencher knife as "sharpe & kene", perhaps only 
to fit his poetic meter (I don't know), but Wynkyn keeps the word, 
describing the trencher knife (unlike either of the others) as 
"sharpe".  Cosman and MoL drop this distinction, but both mention a 
fourth "mensal knife", whose source is again unknown to me.


Anyway, in brief, the "chaffer knife" should probably be called 
"chopper".  Which raises another issue: in my experience, 
smooth-edged knives don't work very well for slicing bread, which is 
why modern bread knives are serrated.  Has anybody seen evidence for 
a serrated knife in SCA period?  I don't see any examples in the MoL 
book.
-- 
                                     John Elys
          (the artist formerly known as mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib)
                                 mka Stephen Bloch
                                 sbloch at adelphi.edu