Here are 3 examples:
Fried egg, fried rice, fried chicken
All these “fry” are different. If you were to use the “fry” in fried rice to fry an egg, you’d get scrambled egg. Fried chicken is done by submerging it in oil, which you won’t do with fried egg or fried rice.
This post is made from the perspective of a Cantonese/Chinese speaker. We have different words for these different types of “fry” (煎, 炒, 炸 respectively)
(Turns out I did post it in the wrong sub and I didn’t realize, and now I feel very stupid. Photon UI has once again screwed me over. Got mad for no reason.)
“cook well in a cold oven” at least makes sense in the context of the time. Ovens then were not supplied continuous heat - instead, they were fired up to a high heat, and then as it slowly cooled food was baked in them according to the current temperature. A cold or slow oven would be at the low end, and a hot or quick oven would be shortly after it was first heated.
This is a great point. It wasn’t like every home had a thermometer in the oven and therefore they had to use different terminology and identifiers for indicating oven temperature. Similarly, this is why American recipes measure in volume vs weight, most homes didn’t have scales, they had cups and spoons.
These were also “precise enough” for the era. Perhaps these lexical gaps form as more styles of cuisine become more common and other cooking methods are used.
I’ve noticed this with some Indian recipes. The instruction “to grind” specifically refers to using grinders, either mill or wet grinders, that just aren’t common in the US and that can create some ambiguity in how finely to chop or grind something.