[Sca-cooks] special pestle for biscuit?

[Terry Decker]

You ever try to eat hardtack?  Without a hammer or a rifle butt?  To eat 
real ship's biscuit, you need to soak it or break it into very small pieces 
that can be softened with saliva.  The weight of the pestle is the key to 
breaking the hardtack, so unless one is using one of the great kitchen 
mortars, the pestle would likely be either metal or stone.

I suspect the "specialness" of the pestle is that in a Christian monastery 
bread would be seen as the body of Christ and a mortar and pestle might be 
reserved for preparing it for the table.  If I'm reading it correctly, "Nec 
tibi Deus parcat" translates to "And God bless you."

Bear


Jim  Chevalier says about biscuit:
<<< Hard enough to be
kept for sea  voyages and broken with a special pestle in monasteries. But 
it
tells us nothing  about size. >>>

Why would a special pestle be needed? What is assumed about the “standard” 
pestle? That it is of wood? that it is small?

Stefan