Abstract
Seventeen cucumber-slicing tests were carried out in the first-semester cooking classes for first year students during the period from 1984 through 2011.
The average scores in the 1980s were between 51 and 61 points, and then dropped to the 30 s after 1997. The students could make about thirty slices in 1984 and 1986, and about twenty slices after 2007. Comparing the scores at the beginning and the end of the semester, the average score rose by 10 points from 22.6 to 32.6 as a result of increasing the number of slices from 15 to 20, and of the average length of cut from 3.8 cm to 4.6 cm into thinner slices by 0.2 mm.
