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MORTAR AND PESTLE
A mortar and pestle are two tools used in conjunction with each other to grind and mix substances. The mortar is a bowl used to contain the substance. The pestle is a stick used for pounding and grinding.
Mortars and pestles were traditionally used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients prior to preparing an extemporaneous prescription. The mortar and pestle is the most common icon associated with pharmacies. For pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are usually made of porcelain, while the handle of the pestle is made of wood. This is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1779.
Mortars are also used in cooking to prepare ingredients such as guacamole and pesto sauce, as well as grinding spices into a powder form. Native American tribes used mortars carved into the bedrock to grind acorns and other nuts. Many of the depressions can be found in their former territories. Very large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi. A regular sized Japanese mortar and pestle is called suribachi and surikogi. Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia and India. Traditional Mexican mortar and pestles, made of basalt volcanic rock, are known as molcajetes.
Mortar and pestles are also used as drug paraphernalia by some in order to grind up pills in preparation for insufflation (snorting).
In Slavic myth, the witch Baba Yaga uses a mortar and pestle for travelling. In Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Dimitri is thought to have killed his father with a pestle. Roman writer Lucian told a tale of an Egyptian priest of Isis using a pestle for spells; the tale would inspire Goethe's Sorcerer's Apprentice, which was animated in Disney's Fantasia.
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