which comes first… the mortar or the pestle?
November 21, 2011
This morning my friend WeeRascal asked on Twitter… Mortar and Pestle or Pestle and Mortar? and my answer was mortar and pestle as that was how I was brought up hearing it said. But my English friend Annie Bennett says she has always called it a pestle and mortar, while admitting that “we Brits have some strange habits as you know…”
I remember recently wincing when on a cooking programme – I think it was Jamie Oliver though it may have been Rick Stein – it was referred to as a pestle and mortar. It just sounded so… well, backwards!
Thinking about it logically, you first put your food item into the mortar before using the pestle; alphabetically the mortar wins out too.
What do you say?
Like this:
11 Comments
leave one →
I agree. Pestle and mortar sounds way stranger than mortar and pestle. I don’t know I could justify it, however.
The mortar is the vessel and the pestle is the utensil that goes with it. I’ve always used mortar + pestle. Pot and ladle.
We drive on the right, we don’t have a written constitution, we are ‘subjects’ not ‘citizens’ and drink warm beer. Anything else you’d like to accuse us of? Mortar and pestle! Ha!
Pestle and mortar every time – and that is without ever having known which was which,
I always say mortar & pestle. I agree with you, the other way around sounds really backwards.
Mortar & pestle. Not that I often have cause to say them, in either order…
Pestle and mortar.
Pestle & mortar for me too. The explanation about putting stuff in the mortar then using the pestle sounds about right, but you put the fork in the steak before you cut it with the knife. Would you say fork and knife or knife and fork?
Or is that also a British thing? Does the rest of the world actually say fork and knife and it’s just us?
I’m Scottish, and it’s fork and knife for me. Left to right on table setting. And yes fork gets used first, then knife.
Mortar and Pestle. Ladies first, for one thing.