How playing cards turned into a meat cutting guide

Imagine that the time has come for a lunch break and you are in England in the 17th century. You are hungry enough to run your hands into a juicy, chubby turkey. You have gathered friends and family around you. It's time to start cooking. You are convinced that you have enough meat to be enough for everyone, and you want to demonstrate to them how you can cook carefully, without staining anyone with fat and pieces of skin.

Nowadays, you can watch a video on how to do it right, and then refer to the old deck of playing cards.

Wild boar head

Each suit corresponded to a certain type of meat. Clubs talked about how to gut salmon or carve a lobster. Tambourines are designed for birds - from ducks and pheasants to pigeons, which should be properly gutted, and not just cut in the middle from the sacrum to the neck. The worms depicted a heart of beef, a leg of venison, explained how to carve a boar's head, which is served to the table with a raised muzzle and a rosemary branch in it. The rabbit was most often served with a severed head and placed it next to the body. Instructions for cutting baked meat were posted at Peaks.

Maps schematically depicted the process. The kit was a useful addition. The drawings examined the sequence of actions step by step, for example, showing the process of separating the wings from the hips, offering tips on adding decorations to dishes. The capon should be decorated with thin slices of oranges and lemons around the dish, while the goose required sweet and juicy apples, possibly gooseberries or grapes. Lobster meat is best served mixed with bread slices, lemon slices, red peppers, several olives and some vinegar.

The brochure indicated how the butcher should behave and dress. Neat butchers should avoid shaking hands without washing their fingers after the meat, and if this cannot be avoided, then only the index finger should be greeted.

Cards were not cheap to manufacture - it was necessary to glue several sheets of paper together so that they were denser and could be used many times. But such brochures were invaluable for conveying information. Educational decks were common at the time. They covered all spheres of knowledge - from constellations to countries of the world, historical kings and queens.

The cards were small in size, and this made them popular. They were easily passed from teachers to students. They had big advantages for the kitchen and dining room. They could be attached to the wall, leaned against a tray, this greatly facilitated the use of the chef. It was not necessary to flip through the pages of a book stained with minced meat, leaving greasy spots on them.

“The cards fit into the treasury of manuals and training books that hit the 16th-century England market,” says Jennifer Pak, associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a specialist in recipes and games from the Renaissance. “The idea of the training cards was that what only professionals could do before, now could be done in the ordinary kitchen, at home. "

The text, written by an anonymous writer, promised card buyers that the manual was created by the best masters of their craft.

In addition to teaching useful skills, cards have also helped home chefs achieve higher status. The cards were designed to help families who became wealthy enough to buy and treat guests with exquisite meat, but had not yet become rich enough to hire professional butchers.

In fact, the rich did not need to know how to handle a knife and meat, how to do it confidently and elegantly. Their kitchen staff had these skills, and they had little desire to get their hands dirty.

Judging by the fact that maps of later periods — 18-19 centuries — have not reached us, the researchers concluded that they had withdrawn from circulation and the printing houses did not print new ones.

For several generations of butchers who used them and learned to cut meat, these cards were more than just a mouth-watering novelty and a way to spend leisure time playing.