Roasting vs Baking

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...As to your specific question, I wouldn't call it pan roasting at all. To me, the process you described is pan frying. The approach is to brown the chops in very little oil, then finish cooking them in the oven. If I were putting that dish on a menu, neither "baking" nor "roasting" would be part of the description...


Pan roasting is a recognized term for the process. Pan Roasting - YouTube
 
Could somebody please queue the Jaws (movie) theme song? :D

Mumu, if you roast it then it's roasted pork chops. If you bake it then it's baked pork chops. N'est-ce pas?

Funny, isn't it. Baked fish, but never roasted fish. I'm inclined to baked pork chops, because they are "pieces." But roast pork when they're not cut, not chopped.

Four and twenty blackbirds are baked in a pie but roasted individually.

(Have you ever seen how they actually did that blackbird pie thing and had the birds fly away when it was cut open?)

Blackbirds_in_pie.png
 
Also, and forgive me if I missed it already, but roasting typically means that the food is also OFF the bottom of the pan, and air is allowed all around the 'roast', be it by a v-rack, or a bed of course cut vegetables.
 
Live blackbird pie:

From surviving instructions, it sounds like they built a typically very heavy pie crust and top filled with flour that they later removed through a hole in the bottom and inserted the birds through the hole.

Sixteenth century pastry chefs apparently had to be especially creative to make things like the combination of pastry warship and pastry castle, both with pastry cannons charged with real gunpowder that could be set off by lighting powder trains so that they fire on each other. On the same table, a pastry stag has an arrow through it so that the ladies can be invited to withdraw the arrow and upon doing so, the red wine inside the stag "bleeds." And the whole setup flanked by pies, one with live birds, another with live frogs. It seems to have been popular to have begun formal dinners with chaos and screaming, especially as the candles were placed so that the birds would put them out in flying away, making the frog thing even more exciting in the dark.

Maybe they were afraid that they otherwise wouldn't have anything to talk about over dinner.

(Actually, the original description says to make the guns of "kickses." I have no idea what kickses are, or where. It later seems to mean breeches or a kind of plant. Neither seems right.)
 
Considering the sort of crowd that would have been amused by live frog pie, nothing would surprise me.

(Ummmm. Crunchy frog.)
 
roasting/baking

I would like to address Historic foodie...why I ask this question,simply because of what joy of cooking said. Roasting is a special type of baking,and seem like there was a difference between baking and roasting besides the same heat process. Also, if you read Tattrat answer "but roasting typical means.......,you kinda get from him he has determined what the roasting processes is. And doing research on the web sites,finding a lot of people say roasting (process)and associate it with carmlizeing....crusty skin ,surface.(just like pan roasting and others say no that's not....its pan frying) We learn from each other. Also was not sure how people could say roasting only applied to meats and veg. When you clearly have baked chicken and that is a meat. So that is why I ask.Maybe to some I am over thinking it ,but to me I don't think so. Just trying to learn the cooking terms.
But, anyways Thanks to you all for all the help.
 
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Boy, we spend a lot of time on DC arguing over minutia. :)

Bake and Roast are two words that mean essentially the same thing these days, but that have different origins. "Roast" comes from the old French "rostir". Bake comes from the Germanic "bahhan".

There are a lot of words in our language that are like this. For example, "Dine" comes from the French. "Eat" comes from the Germans. They both mean the same thing. In general, the French word is used to denote a fancier way of doing things.

One school of thought (and the one that makes the most sense to me) says that "roast", in the middle ages, was the term used to describe cooking food on a spit over an open flame. You would normally do this with the entire animal. Thus, Andy's interpretation is correct. "Bake", on the other hand, meant cooking in an enclosed (or partially enclosed) area, such as a brick or clay oven. It also was used to describe food cooked in a pot with a cover (think Dutch oven).

Since most of us don't have spits and open flames in our homes these days, we now tend to do most of our roasting in the oven. Old terms linger on, despite changes in technology. Maybe we should just refer to everything as "oven cooked".
 
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Well, dang. If you don't argue about minutiae, what else is there? The big things are usually pretty obvious. It's hard to argue whether pizza should be flat. It's much easier to argue about whether it should be square or round.

(Besides. We don't argue. It's just those of us who are right improving the lives of others who are wrong.)

(Right?)

(Must be. Otherwise I'd be wrong.)

Joe Versus the Volcano - YouTube
 
One school of thought (and the one that makes the most sense to me) says that "roast", in the middle ages, was the term used to describe cooking food on a spit over an open flame. You would normally do this with the entire animal. Thus, Andy's interpretation is correct. "Bake", on the other hand, meant cooking in an enclosed (or partially enclosed) area, such as a brick or clay oven. It also was used to describe food cooked in a pot with a cover (think Dutch oven).

Since most of us don't have spits and open flames in our homes these days, we now tend to do most of our roasting in the oven. Old terms linger on, despite changes in technology. Maybe we should just refer to everything as "oven cooked".

That's a pretty plausible reason that explains why roasting is more often applied to meats, while baking is more often applied to bread and other bakery goods.

"Roasted on a spit over an open fire" is pretty evocative. That must have been the original convection & infrared cooker. Evenness is achieved by rearranging or rotating the spit. Yet it's still dry heat and in that respect resembles modern ovens.

Bread seems to require some sort of enclosed space perhaps to keep the heat evenly distributed because bread would probably not do well cooked on only one side. That may seem contradictory of cooking in an old fashioned iron dutch oven over a fire, but in fact the massiveness of the iron and coals usually placed on top ensure even heat.

Boy, we spend a lot of time on DC arguing over minutia. :)
Well, dang. If you don't argue about minutiae, what else is there?

We don't argue. We discuss! :D Hence the name of the forum.

(Besides. We don't argue. It's just those of us who are right improving the lives of others who are wrong.)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLDMqPBeKQ

Those of us who are right are on a mission to strike out wrongness! ;)
 
roasting/baking

that's what some one pointed out to me ....the roast split. That does make sense.But then came up with the question to me and I didn't know because too new to cooking. Why is it we say baked chicken,....(meat so should .be roasted) (smaller peices ?),then what about potatoes cut up and they are roasted not baked (smaller peices). Not saying this to start this all over again,but this also got me started on asking the question of roasting and baking.
 
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The answer is...there is no answer. It's a matter of where you grew up and personal preference. There is no right or wrong, it just is.
 
roasting/baking

just curious.... Hasn't any one else questioned this? (Honestly).I read my post from yesterday, just that one would make you ask wouldn't it? Not trying to start anything up ....just want to know if any one else questions this? THX.
(Curious since I was asked why I asked.)
 
We had this discussion on this site some time ago. I believe the conclusion was the same as this discussion. They are the same method with differences based on culinary convention rather than concrete differences.
 
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