By Jacquie Foote So … when British drive on the…
By Jacquie Foote So ... when British drive on the left side of the road and Americans drive on the right, it is the British…
By Jacquie Foote
So … when British drive on the left side of the road and Americans drive on the right, it is the British who are following the older custom … one dating back to the Middle Ages at least … probably even further back.
Now … how about the knife and fork thing?
If you dine almost anywhere in Europe, you will notice that the Europeans handle their knife and fork differently than Americans.
First, lets consider the American style since we are most familiar with it. In this style, also called the zigzag method, the fork is held in the right hand with the tines up until it is necessary to cut the food on the plate. Then, the fork is transferred to the left hand and the knife is picked up with the right hand. Holding food to the plate with the fork tines-down, a single bite-sized piece is cut with the knife. The knife is then set down on the plate, the fork transferred from the left hand to the right hand, and the food is brought to the mouth for consumption. When another cut is needed, the fork is transferred back to the left hand and the knife is picked up with the right.
In contrast to this is the European style, also called the continental style. In this style, the fork is held in the left hand and the knife in the right. Once a bite-sized piece of food has been cut, it is conducted straight to the mouth by the left hand. The tines of the fork remain pointing down the entire time and the knife is not set down. Both the knife and fork are both held with the handle running along the palm and extending out to be held by thumb and forefinger. This style is sometimes called “hidden handle” because the palm conceals the handle.
So which way came first? Well, the early traditional European method, once the fork was adopted as a utensil, was to transfer the fork and the knife so that the implement most active in the operation of eating was in the right hand. So, if the food needed to be cut, the knife had to be held in the right hand and if the food needed to be conveyed to the mouth, the fork had to be held in the right hand. This tradition was brought to America by British colonists and is still in use in the United States. In the late 1800s, Europeans adopted the more rapid style of eating … one that did not involve switching hands.
So now, why did the Europeans switch and why did the Americans not switch?
The roots of the whole thing go back to the fact that the fork is a newcomer to the dining table. Knives were used to cut and also to convey the food to the mouth. When forks were introduced in the 1400s, they were used, if at all, to get a grip on meat while it was being cut. The knife continued to be the implement that brought the food to the mouth. As Europeans’ table manners evolved, however, the knife became tamer – smaller, single-edged, rounder – and the fork started its ascendancy. So much so that, by the 19th century, the fashion was to downplay the knife.
The culmination of this trend was the introduction of the zigzag method. Scholars are vague as to the reason, but by the 1880s, fashion dictated a return to the original and more efficient method, then known as “the English manner.”
However, in North America, the switch back to the English manner never occurred. Perhaps colonial scholar James Deetz is correct when he points to the relatively late introduction of the fork here as the reason. As late as the mid-1830s, eating with forks was still a rarity at American tables, and the zigzag method involving fork use was the first system Americans were exposed to. Unlike people in Europe, they had no other method to fall back on.
For information on the events at the Geauga County Historical Society’s Century Village Museum, call 440-834-1492 or visit www.geaugahistorical.org.
