Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat (49 page)

You might reply: because risotto needs to be starchy and creamy, whereas slippery pasta benefits from having some of its starch washed away in the water. But this still begs the question. Pasta can be delicious cooked risotto-style, particularly the small rice-shaped orzo, with the incremental addition of wine and stock. Equally, risotto-style rice can be very good with a single large addition of liquid at the beginning, as with paella.

If you look on the Internet, however, there are still a few knife-sharpening workshops that will sharpen anything from hunting knives to pizza wheels and food-processor blades.

His answer was that the “heat passes with much greater difficulty, or much slower, in stewed apples than in pure water.” Because heat conducted slower in stewed apples, it took longer for it to cool down than hot water, hence, the problem of burned mouths when eating apple pie.

Technically, when we say “weight” we really ought to say “mass.” Weight refers to the force exerted on an object by gravity (w = mg, where m = mass and g = gravity). As such, the weight of a cup of flour on the moon would be very much less than on earth. Mass, by contrast, remains constant, regardless of environment: 100 g of flour is always 100 g. This is actually what we mean when we talk of “weight.” However, because this book is concerned with practical technology rather than pure science, I will continue, inaccurately, to use the word “weight” as it is commonly understood, as a synonym for mass.

Here’s a quick translation: spork = a spoon with added tines; splayd = a knife, fork, and spoon in one, consisting of a tined spoon with a sharpened edge; knork = a fork with the cutting power of a knife; spife = a spoon with a knife on the end (an example would be the plastic green kiwi spoons sold in kitchenware shops); sporf = an all-purpose term for any hybrid of spoon, fork, and knife.