Where do the terms rare/medium/well done come from?

[samclem]

@Manduck

I have a dead-tree dictionary here that says that “rare” meaning uncommon, and “rare” meaning slightly cooked, have separate origins and are only coincidentally the same in modern English.

The “rare” that refers to steaks comes from an Old English word “hrer” that means “lightly boiled”.

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Hrer meant "lightly cooked. It then turned into rere, but the only “boiled” uses were in reference to eggs.