What does one use a saw for?
In the 1939 illustrated book Madeline is a kitchen scene. On the counter are plates (or bowls), a colander, a ladle, a saucepan, a large knife — and a hand saw. Is a hand saw a kitchen implement? If so, what's it for?
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In addition to cutting up bones, I've also found the hand saw handy when layering cakes. I've used it for cutting woden and plastic dowels to specific length for cake layering.
It could conceivably be used for sawing through bones. Or perhaps in the book the saw has been left on the counter by somebody?
Any Kitchen I worked in –that does a bit of butchering– has one (any butcher also). It's for sawing bones.
At the time you would not throw anything out of an animal, and a lot of people would make their stock or put a piece of bone in a stew or soup for taste. But, as far as I know, they usually look like a hacksaw not like a the one you're showing.
Maybe the illustrator did not know what a kitchen saw looked like. He's been asked to draw one and did a hand saw by mistake.
This type of saw could be also used in a pastry shop. At some stage (and still, apparently according to @divi ) wedding and other momumental cakes, but also smaller ones, were consolidated with pieces of wood or other non comestible material.
I've used a hand saw to cut up bones when making stock making a long leg of lamb fit a roasting pan, other than that I can't think of any use for them in the kitchen. Serrated knives are commonly used to cut bread, but they don't look like hand saws. There are also tomato knives that are serrated, however they would be hard to mistake for a hand saw as well.
It's possible that the illustrator just added some implements to fill the scene, I wouldn't take that book as a true source of what a 30s kitchen looked like.
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