crapaudine

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/ˌkɹɑpəʊˈdiːn/

noun

A method of preparing fowl and poultry, where the back is split apart and the bird is flattened down the breast, looking somewhat like a toad; spatchcock.

Scrabble 15

Meanings

nouncrapaudine (countable and uncountable, plural crapaudines)

plural crapaudines

  1. countableuncountablecookingA method of preparing fowl and poultry, where the back is split apart and the bird is flattened down the breast, looking somewhat like a toad; spatchcock.

    4. Crapaudine of chicken , mashed potatoes

    1915, Hotel Monthly - Volume 23, Issues 262-273, page 51
    3 more examples

    “Chicken cutlets,” said she, “or crapaudine, and some serniki — only let them be as good as they were last night.

    1861, Lady Charlotte Pepys, Domestic Sketches in Russia - Volume 1, page 71

    The method called crapaudine is another means of preparing a bird for the grill.

    2012, Robert B Garlough, Angus Campbell, Modern Garde Manger: A Global Perspective, page 433

    But how about a 1970s twist – a chicken crapaudine, which is spatchcocked by cutting under the breast but over the legs, and then flipped out?

    2021, Annie Gray, The Kitchen Cabinet
  2. countableuncountablecookingA type of piquant sauce flavored with tarragon, lemon or vinegar, and other spices, that is traditionally served with a fowl cooked in the crapaudine style.

    Crapaudine Sauce

    2013, The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, page 163
    2 more examples

    Spring chickens singed, split, washed, backbone andd breastbone removed, trussed out like a frog, seasoned with salt and peper, rolled in olive oil, broiled well done ; served on toast with crapaudine sauce poured around, garnished with parsley and lemon.

    1904, Charles Fellows, The Culinary Handbook, page 49

    This includes the familiar Bearnaise and tartar sauces, as well as more mysterious sounding ones, like crapaudine (froglike) sauce, which is served with rabbit.

    2015, Charlie Rainbow Wolf, Diana Rajchel, Jill Henderson, Llewellyn's 2016 Herbal Almanac
  3. countableuncountableA form of torture in which the hands and feet are tied together behind the back, forcing the victim's body to bow, and sometimes accompanied by additional forms of torture, such as suspending the body by the point where the hands and feet are tied or beating.

    The crapaudine, however, has never been officially abolished and there is a good chance that it is still being used as one of the ways of breaking a troublesome man's spirit.

    2017, Walter Kanitz, The White Kepi: A Casual History of the French Foreign Legion
    3 more examples

    A few years ago Herr von Rader and his companions would have been sentenced to quite a curious kind of punishment which was at that time considered in the Foreign Legion to be a radical cure for deserters — a kind of mediaeval torture which, by the way, was not kept for deserters solely, but came into use very often. This was the “silo” and the “crapaudine.”

    1910, Erwin Rosen, In the Foreign Legion, page 228

    After several more hours of the crapaudine, the two prisoners were cut down and left chained hand and foot on the ground, exposed to sun, rain, and mosquitoes for twenty-nine days.

    2000, Alice Bullard, Allen D. Boyer, Exile to Paradise, page 251

    The crapaudine was officially abolished by 1910. In 1920, Jacques Londres publicly protested the practice, suggesting that officers favored crapaudine despite the regulations.

    2009, Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy
  4. countableobsoleteuncountableAn ulcer on the coronet of a horse, sheep, or donkey.

    As Spang elaborated: A “crapaud” was a toad and a “crapaudine” was a disease of sheep, so what did that make “pigeon a la crapaudine”?

    2018, Alison Pearlman, May We Suggest: Restaurant Menus and the Art of Persuasion
    2 more examples

    The morbid principle is eliminated without apparent disturbance, and is fixed in a more or less apparent manner on the surface of the skin, or in certain cavities which have external openings. I this category are included glanders, farey, scrofula, lupus, canker of horses' feet, (crapaudine,) elephantiasis, tinea, lepra, &c.

    1871, Horace Capron, Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture on the Diseases of Cattle in the United States, page 131

    The anterior face of the coronet is sometimes the seat of an affection called crapaudine, which is characterized by a peculiar modification of the secretory function of the coronary band, which becomes fissured and cracked after the manner of the bark of an old tree.

    1892, Armand Goubaux, The Exterior of the horse, page 310
  5. countableuncountableA toadstone.

    A HORN RING, very massive, with a silver bezel, set with a crapaudine, XIVth Century. It was found near Richmond, in Yorkshire.

    1863, A Catalogue of the Antiquities and Works of Art Exhibited at Ironmongers' Hall, May, 1861
    2 more examples

    In One thousand Notable Things we are directed to set a doubtful crapudine before a living toad, who will disregard it if a forgery, but endeavour to seize it if genuine: "for he envieth much that man should have that stone."

    1871, W. J. Bernhard Smith, Notes and Queries, page 484

    Some existing examples are ascribed to the fifteenth century, and in the inventory of the Duc de Berri (d. 1416 ) there is mention of a 'crapaudine' set in a golden ring.

    1907, British Museum, A Guide to the Mediaeval Room and to the Specimens of Mediaeval and Later Times in the Gold Ornament Room, page 177
  6. countableuncountableA device for calibrating a pendulum consisting of a dilatable plate that produces an artificial tilt of a clinometer.

    This is accomplished by a device patterned after the crapaudine (Verbaandert & Melchior 1958) used to calibrate horizontal pendulums.

    1973, DR Bower, “A sensitive water-level tiltmeter”, in Philosophical Transactions for the Royal Society
    2 more examples

    For position (2), 14 months' data were obtained in azimuth 47.8' (pendulum 87 and crapaudine 103) and three months' in azimuth 315.0" (pendulum 88 and crapaudine 114).

    1980 August, TF Baker, “Tidal tilt at Llanrwst, North Wales: tidal loading and Earth structure”, in Geophysical Journal International, volume 62, number 2

    For any given crapaudine, individual determination of K at Bidston are mostly within 11% of the mean value of K and generally appear to be randomly distributed about the mean, suggesting that between periods of 15 and 65 s there is no significant dependence of K on the period of swing.

    1983, Paul J. Melchior, The Tides of the Planet Earth, page 229
  7. countableuncountableAn heirloom variety of beet originating in France, and considered possibly the oldest beet cultivar.

    Crapaudine was already considered old when Vilmorin wrote about it in the late 1300s.

    2013, Deborah Madison, Vegetable Literacy, page 225
    3 more examples

    The true type of the crapaudine is 4 inches broad at the superior part, and becomes very regularly thinner until it reaches the length of 11 inches, which is the average.

    1882, Journal of Horticulture and Practical Gardening - Volume 3, page 425

    One variety of garden beet, crapaudine ( GBC ) from the compagny Semaphor carries the same Hind III ctDNA profile as the male sterile Owen.

    1988, E. Magnien, Biotechnology Action Programme, page 601

    Today the French grow both a flattened type called Egyptian and the rounded crapaudine varieties.

    2015, Aileen Bordman, Derek Fell, Monet's Palate Cookbook: The Artist & His Kitchen at Giverny
  8. countablerareuncountableThe socket in which the pivot of a door turns.

    The main gate door at Lehun had a single threshold stone with the door pivot hole (crapaudine) bored into it.

    2001, Bulletin: - Issue 36, page 130
    3 more examples

    A stone door socket (Crapaudine C), associated with a small patch of brick pavement and a large slab of stone forming the threshold of a doorway, was uncovered at a depth of 1.25 m . below surface.

    1965, Iran - Volumes 3-6, page 64

    They were mounted as crapaudine doors; i.e., supflat moldings, studded with rosettes, surmounted by a cyma ported by pivots fitted into sockets in threshold and lintel.

    1973, Encyclopaedia Britannica - Volume 7, page 589

    on the use of pivots on top and bottom to make a door swing in crapaudine style, see Rudolf P. Hommel, China at work, New York: John Day, 1937, pp. 35 and 293.

    2006, Frank Dikötter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China, page 309

Origin

  1. Frenchcrapaud
  2. Frenchcrapaudine
  3. Englishcrapaudine

Borrowed from French crapaudine.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

crapaudine. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/crapaudine

MLA

“crapaudine.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/crapaudine. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “crapaudine,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/crapaudine.

Source: crapaudine on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.