🚀 go-pugleaf

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> fabzorba 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?
> 
In some (Asian, I think) cultures, eating is done using forks and
spoons.  No knives are present.  The spoon doubles as a crude cutting
instrument, when required.

-- 
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://home.comcast.net/~skitt99/main.html