Books on the history of kitchen cutlery

Alex Topfer

Alex Topfer

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May 1, 2019
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Hi
Does anyone have recommendations for books looking at the history of kitchen cutlery? Ideally pre-renaissance Europe and places outside Europe and Japan.

I've been fascinated by the illustration in the back of the Opera de Scapi since I found out about it, but i'm struggling to find out much about old and non-European or Japanese kitchen tools. It would be interesting to know more about different designs and how they have evolved over time. They seem driven a lot by fashion as much as technology
Here's a pic of a cleaver-thing i made based on the Opera de Scapi illustration.
U9OXtGr.jpeg
 
Sorry, no books to recommend.

But to see Azerbaijan cutlery in use check out the prolific YouTube channel "Country Life Vlog". The woman is an Azerbaijani chef & restaurant owner who forages ingredients & preps meals over wood fire in a rural setting, not at her restaurant. Her knife is usually a large tall & thick santoku profile blade that she uses to both slice 'n dice veggies and break down beef or lamb carcass parts. I have to chuckle at her husband who is always making the tea, often with herbs that might seem unusual to us westerners.

Meat chopping knives seem to be quite common in the Middle East, which is generally more sheep & goat centric cuisine instead of beef & pork from what I've seen. The chopping knives are for making kabob meat I suppose. In Azerbaijan they use curly nose choppers called Giymyakesh. In Turkey are huge zirh knives used for cutting & chopping. I've seen similar, though somewhat smaller, knives used in vids from other places around the Middle East.

Then there is the Chinese cleaver.

HTH.
 
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Video of a Thai half moon knife in action trimming out & skinning pig parts. The quarter-disc shape has certainly been refined, probably over many centuries, to perform the work very very efficiently. Note how they steel the edge with a few quick passes on the bottom of what looks to be a steel fry pan or shallow bowl. It obviously gets the knife screaming sharp.

 
ooh, those are interesting, i haven't seen them. it does seem like a case of convergent evolution with ulus
that pchak is fancy!
thanks
 
RokJok said:
Video of a Thai half moon knife in action trimming out & skinning pig parts. The quarter-disc shape has certainly been refined, probably over many centuries, to perform the work very very efficiently. Note how they steel the edge with a few quick passes on the bottom of what looks to be a steel fry pan or shallow bowl. It obviously gets the knife screaming sharp.

Click to expand...
I watched them in several wet markets around Bangkok and all the butchers had a stainless steel fry pan that he steeled his knife on every few cuts.
 
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Alex Topfer said:
they must quite soft steel. probably stamped blade blanks from the look of it
Click to expand...
Do you think they care as long as it works as well as it seems to in this video? Most of those knives are made in a town north of Bangkok. I've been there and they brag a lot about all their handforging skills but like you I'm guessing the pork butchering knives are made from stamped out blade blanks.
 
i'm more just curious about production process, not saying it's bad. you can do very different things with different processes
 
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