I kid you not.
In the Middle Ages, most people ate off rounds of stale bread called trenchers, which could hold cooked meat and vegetables and which could be brought directly to the mouth; knives and spoons could handle anything else that a hand couldn't. Forks, having journeyed to Italy from Byzantium, arrived in France along with Catherine de Medici, who traveled in 1533 from Italy to France to marry Henry II. The political culture of 16th-century France was riven by sectarian violence, and Catherine, in her role as mother to two child-kings, used massive public festivals to demonstrate the power of the monarchy. Food was part of this strategy of spectacle. Catherine's eating methods, as well as foods as diverse as the artichoke and ice cream, went on display as she toured the country for more than a year in the 1560s, drumming up support from the populace and devising etiquette that forced members of rival factions to eat together at her table.
At this time, most forks were two-pronged, and either hefty enough to hold down a cut of meat (similar to what we would think of today as a carving fork) or so dainty they were used primarily to eat sweets at the end of meals. Forks were used occasionally, but not every day. Montaigne, writing in the 1570s in a passage about the force of habit, mentions forks but says he rarely uses them. And they were still associated with sinister behavior. In an essay in Feeding Desire on the sexual politics of cutlery, Carolin Young notes that in 1605, an anonymous allegorical novel about the courtiers of Henry III portrayed a mysterious island peopled by hermaphrodites, whose behavior is characterized by theatricality, artifice, and falsehood. Sure enough, the hermaphrodites eat with forks, spilling more food than they manage to consume in their pursuit of the new and the unnecessary. Young traces the “unsettlingly effeminate aura” of the fork all the way through 1897, when British sailors are still eating without forks, considering them to be unmanly.
Not too many people know how to do that anymore. Dying art.I guess I'm super raciss becuz I no how to set a proper table...
I actually pulled out my good china and crystal for Christmas dinner last year.Not too many people know how to do that anymore. Dying art.
I would have put money on flatware being sexist/misogynistic/violence.
Knives = Self-explanatory.
Spoons = Spooning, Spooning often leads to Forking.... Sexist/Misogynistic
And you sure know how to swizzle stick your iced tea!I guess I'm super raciss becuz I no how to set a proper table...
We need to meet for another fansy luncheon.And you sure know how to swizzle stick your iced tea!
Thanks for correcting me when I called the little spoon a 'ketchup fork'...
A "chef and food activist," no less!Man - a person got PAID to write that stupid ass article? I'm in the wrong business.