Foil (metal) Foil (metal) A foil is a very thin sheet of metal, usually made by hammering or rolling. Foils are most easily made with malleable metals, such as aluminium, copper, tin, and gold. Foils usually bend under their own weight and can be torn easily. The more malleable a metal, the thinner foil can be made with it. For example, aluminium foil is usually about 1/1000 inch (0.03 mm), whereas gold (more malleable than aluminium) can be made into foil only a few atoms thick, called gold leaf. Extremely thin foil is called metal leaf. Leaf tears very easily and must
Kitchen utensil utensils recommended to the aspiring householder in cookbooks as the century progressed. Earlier in the century, in 1828, Frances Byerley Parkes had recommended a smaller array of utensils. By 1858, Elizabeth H. Putnam, in "Mrs Putnam's Receipt Book and Young Housekeeper's Assistant", wrote with the assumption that her readers would have the "usual quantity of utensils", to which she added a list of necessary items: Copper saucepans, well lined, with covers, from three to six different sizes; a flat-bottomed soup-pot; an upright gridiron; sheet-iron breadpans instead of tin; a griddle; a tin kitchen; Hector's double boiler; a tin coffee-pot for