Whisk (pronounced wisk or hwisk)
(1) To move with a rapid, sweeping stroke.
(2) To sweep (dust, crumbs etc, or a surface) with a
whisk broom, brush, or the like.
(3) To draw, snatch or carry etc; a generalized term
meaning to move or do something nimbly or rapidly (often as “whisked away”, “whisked
off” etc).
(4) To whip (eggs, cream etc.) to a froth using a whisk
or other beating device.
(5) The an act of whisking; a rapid, sweeping stroke;
light, rapid movement.
(6) As whisk broom, a device topped with a small cluster
of grass, straw, hair or the like, used especially for brushing.
(7) A kitchen utensil, in the form of a bunch of (usually
metal wire, plastic strands or (in the Far East) bamboo) loops held together in
a handle and used for beating, blending or whipping eggs, cream; making
souffles etc. Modern whisks can also be electro-mechanical
and “non-stick” whisks use a Teflon coating.
(8) The by-product of something which has been “whisked
away”.
(9) A special plane used by coopers for evening a barrel’s
chimes (the curved, outermost edge or rim at the top and bottom ends of the
barrel, typically wider and thicker than the rest of the staves (the vertical
wooden planks that form the sides)).
(10) In fashion, a kind of cape forming part of a woman's
dress (sometimes detachable).
(11) In some card games, the act of sweeping the cards
off the table after a trick has been won.
1325–1375: From the Middle English & Scots wysk (rapid sweeping movement), from the
earlier Scots verbs wisk & quhisk, from the Old English wiscian (to plait) & weoxian (to clean with brush), from a Scandinavian
source comparable to the Old Norse & Norwegian visk (wisp), the Swedish viska
besom & wisp (to whisk (off)) and the Danish visk & viske (to wipe,
rub, sponge) and related to the Middle Dutch wisch, the Dutch wis, the
Old High German wisken (to wipe) &
wisc (wisp of hay), the German Wisch, the Latin virga (rod, switch) & viscus
(entrails), the Czech vechet (a wisp
of straw), the Lithuanian vizgéti (to
tremble), the Czech vechet (wisp of
straw) and the Sanskrit वेष्क (veṣka) (noose) all thought from the Proto-Germanic wiskaz & wiskō (bundle of hay, wisp), from the primitive Indo-European weys- or weis (to turn; to twist). The
un-etymological wh-, noted since the 1570s, probably developed because it was expressive
of the sound typically generated by the act of “whisking” something; the same evolution
was noted in whip and the onomatopoeic whack and whoosh. The device used in preparing food (implement
for beating eggs etc) was first documented as “a whisk” in the 1660s although cooks
had presumably been using such things for many years. The verb developed in the late fifteenth
century, the transitive sense from the 1510s while the familiar meaning “to
brush or sweep (something) lightly over a surface” dates from the 1620s. Whisk & whisking are nouns & verbs
and whisked is a verb; the noun plural is whisks.
Whisk is (almost) wholly unrelated to whisky &
whiskey. Dating from 1715, whisky was a variant of usque,an
abbreviation of usquebaugh, from the Irish uisce beatha (water of life) or the Scots Gaelic uisge-beatha (water of life), ultimately a translation of the
Medieval Latin aqua vītae (water of life (originally an alchemical term
for unrefined alcohol)). The form
whiskybae has been obsolete since the mid eighteenth century. The Scots and Irish forms were from the
Proto-Celtic udenskyos (water) + biwotos (life), from biwos(alive). The Old Irish uisce (water) was from the primitive Indo-European ud-skio-, a suffixed form of the root wed- (water; wet); bethu (life), from the primitive Indo-European gwi-wo-tut-, a suffixed form of gwi-wo-, from the root gwei- (to live). The noun plurals are whiskies &
whiskeys. Although iskie bae had been known in the 1580s, it appears unrelated to usquebea (1706), the common form of which was uisge beatha which in 1715 became usquebaugh, then whiskeybaugh & whiskybae, the most familiar phonetic form of which
evolved as “usky”, influencing the final spellings which remain whisky &
whiskey. Wisely, the Russians
avoided the linguistic treadmill, the unchanging vodka freely translated as
“little water”. The exception was the “whisky”, a small carriage (technically
a “light gig” to coach-builders) which was from the verb whisk, the idea being
something in which one was “whisked quickly around” the lightweight carriages
being faster than most. Chefs also
caution home cooks not to confuse “whisky butter” (A concoction made of
whisky, butter & sugar) with “whisked butter” which is butter which has
been whisked.
Lindsay Lohan Oreos
Whether it was already something widely practiced isn’t
known but Lindsay Lohan is credited with introducing to the world the culinary
novelty Oreos & peanut butter in The
Parent Trap. According to the
director, it was added to the script “…for
no reason other than it sounded weird and some cute kid would do it." Like some other weirdnesses, the combination
has a cult following and for those who enjoy peanut butter but suffer arachibutyrophobia (the
morbid fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth), Tastemade’s have
provided a recipe for Lindsay Lohan-style Oreos with a preparation time
(including whisking) of 2 hours. They
take 20 minutes to cook and in this mix there are 8 servings (scale ingredients
up to increase the number of servings).
Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (plus more for dusting)
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
Powdered sugar, for dusting
Filling Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
A pinch of kosher salt (omit if using salted peanut butter)
Filling Instructions
(1) With a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, the
butter & peanut butter until creamy.
(2) Gradually add powdered sugar and beat to combine,
then beat in vanilla and salt.
Whisking the mix.
Instructions
(1) Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Line two baking
sheets with parchment paper.
(2) In small bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder &
salt.
(3) In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment,
cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the vanilla extract. With the mixer
running on low speed, add the flour mixture and beat until just combined (it
should remain somewhat crumbly).
(4) Pour mixture onto a work surface and knead until it’s
“all together”; wrap half in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator.
(5) Lightly dust surface and the top of the dough with a
1:1 mixture of cocoa powder and powdered sugar.
(6) Working swiftly and carefully, roll out dough to a ¼-½ inch (6-12 mm) thickness and
cut out 2 inch (50 mm) rounds. Transfer
them to the baking sheets, 1 inch (25 mm) apart (using a small offset spatula
helps with this step). Re-roll scraps and cut out more rounds, the repeat with remaining
half of the dough.
(7) Bake cookies until the tops are no longer shiny (
about 20 minutes), then cool on pan for 5 minutes before transferring to wire
rack completely to cool.
(8) To assemble, place half the cookies on a plate or
work surface.
(9) Pipe a blob of filling (about 2 teaspoons) onto the
tops of each of these cookies and then place another cookie on top, pressing
slightly but not to the extent filled oozes from the sides.
(10) Refrigerate for a few minutes to allow the filling
to firm up. Store in an air-tight
container in refrigerator.
The manufacturer embraced the idea of peanut butter Oreos and has released versions, both with the classic cookie and a peanut butter & jelly (jam) variation paired with its “golden wafers”. As well as Lindsay Lohan’s contribution, Oreos have attracted the interest of mathematicians. Nabisco in 1974 introduced the Double Stuf Oreo, the clear implication being a promise the variety contained twice crème filling supplied in the original. However, a mathematician undertook the research and determined Double Stuf Oreos contained only 1.86 times the volume of filling of a standard Oreo. Despite that, the company survived the scandal and the Double Stuf Oreo’s recipe wasn’t adjusted.
Scandalous in its own way was that an April 2022 research paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids wasn’t awarded that year’s Ig Nobel Prize for physics, the honor taken by Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji & Atilla Incecik, for their admittedly ground-breaking (or perhaps water-breaking) work in explaining how ducklings manage to swim in formation. More deserving surely were Crystal Owens, Max Fan, John Hart & Gareth McKinley who introduced to physics the discipline of Oreology (the construct being Oreo + (o)logy). The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) + -logy. The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century. French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía). Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story). In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie). Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)). In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al). Oreology is the study of the flow and fracture of sandwich cookies and the research proved it is impossible to split the cream filling of an Oreo cookie down the middle.
The core finding in Oreology was that the filling always
adheres to one side of the wafer, no matter how quickly one or both cookies are
twisted. Using a rheometer (a laboratory
instrument used to measure the way in which a viscous fluid (a liquid,
suspension or slurry) flows in response to applied forces), it was determined creme
distribution upon cookie separation by torsional rotation is not a function of
rate of rotation, creme filling height level, or flavor, but was mostly
determined by the pre-existing level of adhesion between the creme and each
wafer. The research also noted that were
there changes to the composition of the filling (such as the inclusion of
peanut butter) would influence the change from adhesive to cohesive failure and
presumably the specifics of the peanut butter chosen (smooth, crunchy,
extra-crunchy, un-salted (although the organic varieties should behave in a
similar way to their mass-market equivalents)) would have some effect because
the fluid dynamics would change. The
expected extent of the change would be appear to be slight but until further
research is performed, this can’t be confirmed.
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