French Provincial Cooking (14 page)

 

Cuiller à bouche
,
à soupe
Tablespoon.

 

Cuiller à pot
Small ladle.

 

Cuisinière
Cooking stove, range.

 

Écumoire
Skimmer. There is one shown in the drawing on page 153.

 

Entonnoir
Funnel.

 

Étamine
Tammy cloth. Thick cloth through which liquids are strained. In most households this is replaced by a hair sieve or rather, nowadays, a nylon one, but some sort of close-woven cloth, such as a cheese cloth, is necessary for straining consommé, aspic and fruit jellies.

Faisselle
Rush basket or perforated earthenware mould for draining soft cheeses.

Fouet
Whisk. The best type for the whisking of eggs is described in the chapter on egg cookery, page 200. It is shown in the drawing on page 58.

 

Four
Oven.

 

Fourneau
Stove, cooking range.

 

Fusil
Steel for sharpening knives.

 

Glace
,
armoire à
Ice chest. Also called
timbre à glace
.

 

Glacière
Cold room, ice chest, refrigerator.

 

Glacière à sucre, Glaçoire
Sugar caster, sprinkler, dredger.

 

Gril
Grill for grilling food.

 

Grille
Wire pastry rack. Also various patent gadgets for grilling; also frying basket.

 

Hachinette
A small solid wooden bowl complete with crescent-shaped chopping knife which is immensely useful for chopping small quantities of parsley, herbs, shallots, onions, etc.

Hachoir
Chopping knife, mincing knife. Generally crescent-shaped, single, double, or multi-bladed and double-handled. For an ordinary household the single-bladed chopping knife is sufficient, although the multi-bladed chopper produces far superior minced meat to that done in the mincing machine, for it does not squeeze out the juices. But few people would care to bother with it nowadays.

Lardoire
Larding needle.

 

 

Lèchefrite
Dripping tin. The tin or dish placed underneath food while it is roasting, to catch the juices and fat.

 

 

Louche
Soup ladle or dipper.

 

 

Mandoline
An instrument consisting of a narrow rectangular wooden board on which various different cutting blades are fixed. Indispensable even in a small household for the easy, rapid and accurate slicing of potatoes for dishes such as
pommes Anna
and
gratin dauphinois,
for cucumbers for salad, and for shredding celeriac for
céleri-rémoulade
. Also called a
Coupe-Julienne.
The English trade-name for the best-known make of this instrument is the Universal Slicer.

Marmite
A tall stock-pot or a stew-pot, usually, but not invariably, straight-sided, made of tinned copper (right), or enamelled cast-iron, or earthenware. The
pot-au-feu
and all its derivatives are cooked in a marmite, the shape of the pot ensuring the minimum of evaporation. Hence, the tall earthenware or china tureens, both the large and the small individual ones, in which the consommé is served, are called
marmites
. The consommé known as
petite
marmite
also gets its name from the same source. The best stock-pots for household use ever made in England were the heavy, cast-iron, enamelled round pots with flat side-handles made by Kenrick (left) and also by Izon’s. They are now obsolete. The best replacement is a two-handled straight-sided enamelled steel pot of French origin.

 

Mortier
. Wooden or stoneware mortar. Although so much of the work of pounding, grinding, and sieving is now done by the electric mixer, a pestle and mortar still seems to me to be a kitchen necessity. Heavy wooden mortars are preferable to modern English stoneware composition.

Moule à charlotte
A plain, fairly deep copper or tin mould with sloping sides (1) and sometimes with a lid.

 

Moule à dariole
Small mould approximately the shape of a castle pudding.

Moule à douille
Ring mould, cylinder mould (2). Savarin and Baba moulds are also cylinder moulds, usually fluted, and of varying depths. An Alsatian kugelhopf mould (3) is similar to a Baba mould, and is made either in copper, earthenware, aluminium or tinplate.

Moule
à
pâté
A hinged round or oval open mould for pâtés cooked in a crust (4).

 

Mouli-légumes
Vegetable mill. An excellent invention for the rapid sieving of soups, purées and so on.

 

Moulin à café
Coffee grinder.

 

Moulin à poivre
Pepper mill.