A Chinoise (sometimes "Chinois") is an extremely fine meshed conical sieve used for straining soups and sauces to produce a very smooth texture. It can also be used to dust pastries with a fine layer of powdered sugar. The term is sometimes confused with a piece of equipment called a "China Cap" which is a conical strainer made of perforated metal the mesh of which is much less fine. It is often accompanied by a conical wooden dowel used to press soft materials through the strainer and performs a similar function to that of a food mill. Sieve may mean: a colander, used in cooking goaltender, as taunted among crowds at American college ice hockey games In mathmatics, sieve theory, technique for counting or filtering sets of numbers sieve of Eratosthenes general number field sieve sieve (category theory), a way of writing down how objects in a... A food mill is a tool used to grind and puree foods through perforated disks using a hand-turned crank. ...