🚀 go-pugleaf

fabzorba <myles.abzorba@gmail.com> writes:

> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
> This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to
> pierce, like peas. When I was a child and could get away with it, I
> would often turn the fork tines up so I could use it as a scoop, which
> surely makes sense. I must admit that I do this sometimes when I am
> eating alone, but never in company.
>
> I rem seeing a British academic eating a meal with undergraduates many
> years ago, and the way he handled those pesky peas was wonderful - he
> would glue a few of them on his tines-down fork using some mashed
> potato. Now, this etiquette seems to have largely gone. But I was
> still surprised when I viewed an episode of Hannibal, the new American
> series which has Mads Mikkelsen as the erudite gourmand psychiatrist
> Hannibal Lecter, who happens to have being a serial killer as a side
> line. In this episode, Hannibal once again prepares a sumptuous
> European style feast. I noticed that his guests ate like typical
> Americans, shoveling food into open mouths, and using eating utensils
> as devices to point and make gestures with.
>
> But then I saw Hannibal use the fork tines up! I was totally gob-
> smacked! Surely this cannot be? Or am I getting something wrong?

Fork etiquette is a fascinating bit of comparative cultural history.
According to Petroski (_The Evolution of Useful Things_) the way that
Europeans and Americans treat forks has to do with what they did
before forks were introduced.  In much of Europe, including the UK,
the practice was to eat with two knives, using one to hold the food
down while the other cut, and then using the first to bring the food
to the mouth.  So when forks were introduced as a better second knife
(since the multiple tines meant that the food was less likely to twist
while cutting and the lack of a blade meant you were less likely to
cut your lips), it was held tines-down (to better stabilize) and it
remained in the non-cutting hand when bringing the food to the mouth
(as the second knife had).

In America, by contrast, the practice was to eat with a knife and
spoon, using the spoon to stabilize food (poorly) while cutting and
switching hands to scoop the cut food (or, apparently more commonly
there than in Europe, stew) and bring it to the mouth, because most
people have trouble either cutting or using a spoon with their off
hand.  The fork was taken as a better spoon (since it could better
hold food when cutting, and you didn't need to push food onto it with
your knife), but the practice of changing hands and holding it convex
side up, as had been done with the spoon, remained.

Do Brits these days think of forks as more like spoons or more like
knives?

-- 
Evan Kirshenbaum                       +------------------------------------
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    evan.kirshenbaum@gmail.com         |            Peter Moylan

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