Playing cards that taught 17th-century cooks to carve meat (2019)

Today, you might watch an instructional video, but then you may have turned to a deck of playing cards. "The genteel house-keeper's passtime, or the mode of carving at the table represented by a pack of playing cards" was a deck and accompanying booklet first issued by London printer Joseph Moxon in 1677. Cards were portable and easy to pass around, which made them popular among tutors with multiple pupils. Beyond teaching useful skills, the cards also helped home chefs reach toward higher status. Moxon's cards were "Designed to aid families who had become wealthy enough to serve meat to guests, but were not yet wealthy enough to hire professional carvers," writes Edward A. Malone, a professor of technical communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology, in a 2008 paper about playing cards' history as vehicles for technical know-how and scientific information. Judging by the scarcity of other records, the cards probably didn't have a shelf life much beyond the early 18th century. Young says, "We assume that they dropped out of circulation because we don't have anything until much later facsimiles." For the generations of carvers who followed their lead the cards were much more than just an appetizing novelty.