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The Thickness of Slices
By "very thin slices of meat" we mean slices less than an eighth of an inch thick. "Thin slices" are from one eighth of an inch to three sixteenths of an inch in thickness.
Slices of "medium thickness" are one quarter of an inch. Bread for dinner should be cut in slices one inch and a half thick, and each slice should be divided across into three or four long pieces, according to the width of the slice.
For tea, cut slices three eighths of an inch thick, and for toast, one quarter of an inch.
Thick loaves of cake should be cut in slices from three fourths of an inch to an inch thick, and divided once. Cut loaves of medium thickness in pieces as broad as the cake is thick, and divide them once. Thin sheets of cake should be cut in rectangular pieces twice as broad as the cake is thick. Then divide once, or even twice, if the sheet be very wide. Layer cakes baked in round pans are usually divided into triangular pieces; but they are less suggestive of baker's Washington pie, which is so offensively common, if the edges be trimmed in such a way as to leave a square. Then cut this square into smaller squares or rectangles.
The quietest and most useful page in the book. It fixes what thin, very thin and medium actually meant, which unlocks every recipe of the period that uses those words.
- The words were measurementsVery thin is under an eighth of an inch, around three millimetres. Thin runs from an eighth to three sixteenths. Medium is a quarter inch, about six millimetres. When a book of this era tells you to cut thin slices, it is not expressing a preference, it is giving you a number.
- Dinner bread is a batonA slice an inch and a half thick, cut across into three or four long pieces. That is a finger of bread with crust at one end, not a sandwich slice, and it is how bread came to a dinner table rather than to a tea table.
- Toast is cut thinner than tea breadTea bread at three eighths, toast at a quarter. Toast is thinner because it has to dry and crisp the whole way through rather than brown on a soft middle.
- Cake is cut by proportion, not by sizePieces as broad as the cake is thick, or twice as broad for a thin sheet, divided once or twice depending on the width. The rule is relational, so every piece ends with roughly the same proportions whatever cake you started from. It is a designer’s rule and it still works.
- You will need a ruler the first timeThese thicknesses sit below what most people cut by eye, and the difference between an eighth and a quarter of an inch is the difference between two dishes. A long thin blade, wiped between cuts, and a measurement for the first slice.
The last instruction is the one worth sitting with. Trim a round layer cake into a square and cut it into smaller squares, because triangles are less suggestive of baker’s Washington pie, which the page calls offensively common. A rule about the shape of a slice turns out to be a rule about not resembling a shop. A household that baked was marking itself off from one that bought, and a serving manual’s real subject is the hundred small signs by which a table was read — down to the angle of a cut.