[Sca-cooks] pantler knife/chaffer knife

[James Prescott]

Bingo!

Found something quite interesting:

 From John Russell's Book of Nurture (c.1460)

http://jrider.web.wesleyan.edu/wescourses/2001f/fren234/01/bookofnurture.htm


:: begin quote ::

The duties of a Panter or Butler

     "The first year, my son, you shall be panter or butler. In the
pantry, you must always keep three sharp knives, one to chop
the loaves, another to pare them, and a third, sharp and keen,
to smooth and square the trenchers with.

:: end quote ::

This doesn't say where the word "chaffer" comes from, but a
comparison with your original quote seem to indicate pretty
clearly (to me) that it is used to "chop the loaves".

It is also clear that this book is the probable source for
much of Cosman's information on the topic.

There are some other interesting bits on the web page.



I've also found in the OED chipping knife, "a knife for
'chipping' bread" with a 1601 citation "The yeomen [of the
Pantry] have for their fees, all the chippings of breade ..
for the which they find chipping knives."

A chipping is "A paring of the crust of a loaf" usually in
the plural as chippings.  The earliest citation with this
meaning is 1474.

The OED also says for the verb chip "To chip bread: to pare
it by cutting away the crust." and "So to chip or chip away
the crust."  There are a number of citations.  The 1554
citation from "Bk. Nurture" is "In your offyce of the Pantrye,
see that your bread be chipped and squared."

Shakespeare has "A good shallow young fellow: a' would have
made a good pantler, a' would have chipped bread well." and
"Not to dispraise me, and call me pantler and bread-chipper
and I know not what?" (Henry IV Part 2)


Now, while this suggests that "chaffer" and "chipping knife"
might have meant the same thing, there's no obvious etymological
link.

The modern synonymy of "to chip at" and "to chaff" (in the
sense of bantering with someone) (1896) (OED supplement) is
interesting but not any kind of proof.

The parallelism between "chaff" in the sense of the husks of
wheat or pods of peas and "chippings" as crusts of bread is
suggestive, but again not conclusive.

The chipping knife might be synonymous with the parer rather
than with the chaffer.


Thorvald