grill

[victor steinbok]

I am going to stand on my kitchen soapbox again.

One reason I take a long time in posting some items (I promise to put
up the final pieces on Genoise and on "pepper game" tonight) is that I
get distracted along the way. While inspecting the earliest Genoise
references, I spotted "saumon grille" and started looking (for the
fourth or fifth time) into "grill". One thing that struck me is that
one entry in the OED spectacularly does not fit:

> grill, n.4
> 1. b. In modern use: a gas burner (on a gas cooker), or a hot plate or a set of elements (on an electric cooker), which directs radiant heat downwards. Also attrib.

There are two problems with this. There is nothing "modern" in this
use--at least, not in the US. Standard kitchen lingo distinguishes
between a grill--radiating upward--and a broiler--radiating downward.
Manufacturers have been using this distinction for some time
(although, my experience is limited to the 1980s forward). The first
two citations under this definition clearly refer to this kind of
grill as well, although the rest either clearly fit this definition or
can be interpreted in this manner.

One can have a broiler with a grill pan, but, in this case, the
broiler is still on top and the grill on the bottom. One
characteristic of using a grill is the grill or gridiron pattern on
the cooked food, which certainly cannot be obtained from heat
radiating from above.

If anything, the definition may need to reverse itself and change
"downward" to "upward", then add "extended use" that expands to the
broiler--yes, colloquially people do refer to a broiler as a grill,
or, at least, they use the verb "grill" instead of "broil". I am not a
stickler for the distinction, but it is preposterous to claim that a
grill is /only/ a downward-radiating device.

Of course, this simply reverts the entire definition to grill n.4 1.a., right?

>  1. a. A gridiron.

Well, no. This defines the actual cooking surface, not the entire
contraption. In fact, there are two kinds of contraptions that perhaps
may need separate definition. One is a kitchen appliance, which may be
a gas burner covered with a steel plate or a gridiron or an electric
coil with similar covering. Woodfire grills are less common in
kitchens, although they may well show up in commercial kitchens. But,
for the most part, a kitchen grill is the large steel surface used for
cooking burgers, meat for "steak" subs, etc. in commercial kitchens (a
smaller domestic kitchen appliance may well be referred to as a
"griddle") or a gridiron slotted or mesh surface above a heating
element. On the other hand, there is no OED entry at all for what
passes as the one domestic appliance that, in the US, is associated
with men cooking--the outdoor grill.

Ironically, the traditional grill--which is a surface heated in or on
the fire and then used for cooking something on it--can now be found
in the form of a "grill pan", i.e., a frying pan with ridges that
allows for both air circulation around the cooked food and for the
characteristic "stripes". There is also "table-top grill" that is
usually associated with Asian--particularly Japanese and
Korean--cuisine, but can show up in almost any ethnic restaurant. The
bottom line is that none of these variations use downward-radiating
heat and none are covered in the OED.

Ironically--or, perhaps, predictably--the entry for broiler fails to
cover the distinction as well.

> 1. b. A gridiron or similar utensil used in broiling. Now U.S.

This is not unreasonable as there used to be no distinction as to the
direction of heat in a broiler--top-surface cooking used to be
referred to as "broiling" as well as "grilling" and both the
corresponding verbs and nouns coexisted for a long time. Still, when
it comes to moder appliances, cooktops no longer have a broiler, ovens
do. And the broiler is invariably at the top of the oven--although
most retail ovens in the US (including stoves and ranges that include
both a cooktop and and oven) come with "broiler pans", which go
/under/ the broiler. Some appliances have a separate "broiler
drawer"--that is, second "oven" that rests underneath the element.
This is a question of functional design--retail oven do not have
separate controls for the top and the bottom elements, except for the
"broil" setting. When oven is set to "bake", usually only the bottom
element is engaged. When it is set to "broil", only the top one is
engaged. In units with "broiler drawer", there is no need for a top
element--the same element serves both functions. But what all of these
have in common is that a broiler has downward-radiating heat.

Again, colloquially, especially in restaurant slang, broil, broiled,
broiler and grill (n. & v.) and grilled may all have similar and
interchangeable function. But AFAICT, most people (in the US, at
least) will recognize the distinction between broil/broiler and
grill/grill.

VS-)

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