Text 1938, 63 rader
Skriven 2007-07-29 13:10:42 av Carol Shenkenberger (3:800/201)
   Kommentar till text 1935 av Ardith Hinton (1:153/716.0)
Ärende: Re: Cooking Terms
=========================
*** Quoting Ardith Hinton from a message to Carol Shenkenberger ***

AH> Hi & welcome back, Carol!  Recently you wrote in a message to Peter Co

Yes, catchup in my backlog here still ongoing.  I recon' folks here won't mind
replies to messages posted in late May which is about where my pointers are.
Posts straight to my name though come up right away in the pre-scan.

CS>  One of my own, garnered from very old family letters
CS>  on cooking, is 'fistful' as a measurement. You see it
CS>  mentioned in old (really old 1100's up through 1800's)
CS>  recipes in england and in current use in Japan.


AH>          Ah, yes.  I often measure things like macaroni that way.  Dif
AH> people may have different sized fists, though!  I imagine Dallas's fis
AH> for example, is somewhat larger than that of the average Japanese woma

True, it's never been an exact measure.  Another used by Japan is 'enough by
eye' which tells you little until you have seen the food in finished form.

'Enough by eye' may be a local Sasebo (southern Japan farming area)
translation.  I hear-tell there's other terms used in Northern parts?

Grin, I just used heartell (hear-tell).  Can you tell I am not from around your
neck of the woods?  For the rest of you, my mountain based USA southern talk
just slipped out again.  'Hear-tell' means 'rumor'.  You hear it then tell
someone else about it.  'Heard-tell' would be a rarer form of it.  Russian
based teachers will think 'hear-tell' is a mistake in english if you use it
but it isn't.  It's just a wee bit of very old english from Shakespere times
that lingered in some spots.  It's usage above was automatic and unthought of
until I re-read the sentance and noted I'd been 'odd' again.

Back to 'fistful'.  Translate as roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup.  A closed fistful
would be 1/8 to 1/4 cup.  A 'big fistful' would be 1/3 to 1/2 cup.

For those of you reading from Russia and that ilk of lands, 'big fistful'
means as much as you can comfortably grab in your hand and would vary witht he
item shape.  It may be as much as 1 cup if it's green beans.

(Darn, ilk.  Means 'places feeling similar'.  In this case, former USSR lands).

AH>          Another intriguing system I've run across in late 19th & earl
AH> 20th century British cookbooks is measurement by price.  Sixpence wort
AH> of minced beef, at today's prices, would be less than a quarter of an
AH> ounce.  I'm sure that's not quite what they meant.  But what they mean
AH> is beyond me....  :-)

There's loads of funny cookery tales based on that!  You have to know the
prices of the times to get a feel, but it was pretty useful as a term back
then!

As we talk of this, it occurs to me maybe we havent mentioned that Eurpoeans
generally measure foods by weight but USAans measure by 'volume'.  This makes
European cookery look far more 'exact' to us in the US/Canada than it really
is.  It also makes ours look a funky unexact (inexact?) by their standards.

It's competing ideas make it hard for both of us to follow one another's
recipes until we have an idea of what is meant.
                                       xxcarol

--- Telegard v3.09.g2-sp4
 * Origin: SHENK'S EXPRESS, Sasebo Japan 81-6160-527330 (3:800/201)