Culinary knife cuts

There are a number of regular knife cuts that are used in many recipes. Each produces a standardized cut piece of food. The two basic shapes for these cuts are the strip and the cube. Strips are generally cut to 2½-3 inches, and are defined by width, from thickest to thinnest as "batonnet", "allumette", "julienne", and "fine julienne". The cube shapes, in order from largest to smallest, are the large, medium, and small dice, the brunoise, and the fine brunoise.

Translated literally from French, batonnet means "little stick". The batonnet measures approximately 1/4 inch x 1/4 inch x 2-2.5 inches (6mm x 6mm x 5–6 cm). It is also the starting point for the small dice.

Referred to as the allumette when dealing with potatoes, and sometimes also called the "matchstick cut" (which is the translation of "allumette" from French), the julienne measures approximately 1/8 inch × 1/8 inch × 1-2 inches (3mm × 3mm × 3–5 cm). It is also the starting point for the brunoise cut. The first reference to Julienne occurs in François Massialot's Le Cuisinier Royal in 1722.

The fine julienne measures approximately 1/16 inch × 1/16 inch × 1-2 inches (1.5mm × 1.5mm × 3–5 cm), and is the starting point for the fine brunoise cut.

Cuts with six even sides include:

Other cuts include:

...
Wikipedia