Pies, Forks and Etiquette

An American pie fork, along with a pastry, or cake, fork. – For years, pie was eaten properly with a knife and a fork, until savvy manufacturers designed special 3-timed forks with one wide tine (mimicking the knife) to assist in eating pie, thus eliminating the need for a knife. Four-tined cake forks soon followed.

A Question of Etiquette Settled

In a Bowery museum, there is a “congress of lady pie eaters,” and they are depicted on the “oil painting” outside as eagerly devouring great segments of pie, without the aid of either knife or fork, a fact that ought to settle the vexed question of etiquette, how a lady should eat pie.—New York Tribune, 1892

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