Spoons for the Gilded Age

All still usable for dining and entertaining elegantly with foods today... From left to right are: 

1. An ice cream spoon —for your favorite chocolate or vanilla
2.  An orange spoon— great for eating melon served in the rind 
3. A sauce spoon —elegantly add just that right amount from the sauce served “on the side”
4. An ice cream, spoon-fork “spork” —ideal for ice creams with large pieces of fruit or other delights
5. A confection spoon— use it to sprinkle sugar or cinnamon onto berries or toast
6. A jelly spoon— not just jellies, but use it for preserves or honey, too
7. A horseradish spoon— excellent for serving mayonnaise and other creamy condiments 
8. A caviar spoon— ideal for caviar, caviar and even, caviar. 

The name “1847 Rogers Bros.” is misleading. The page above shows spoons from an 1880’s salesman’s catalog.

Entertaining in Another Era 

The plethora of flatware designs, and variety of foods they were designed for, in the Victorian and Edwardian eras offered elegant and correct ways to outdo, or impress one’s neighbors at the dining table. They also helped reflect lighting in the room and created a more luminous dining experience in the later days of candlelight and gaslight dining, as well as the early days of electricity.

Many foods that only the wealthy could afford to serve, and serve properly in style, were those which needed refrigeration or were quickly perishable. Spoons, like these antiques pictured, were offered in abundance in the later 1800's and early 1900's. They had a variety of uses. The spoons which feature a gold layer (or vermeil “gilding”), were designed that way, to protect the silver from corrosive foods such as salt or citric acid. The one which is made entirely 

of horn, was made for a very salty food— caviar. 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Of Etiquette, Olives and Sugar Tongs

In the 1600’s, fork and other flatware usage, could show “the difference between a man of the world,” and a man who did not have “the tune of the time.” A sterling combination fork and spoon for serving olives, circa 1880’s, by Gorham. Over the years, forks and combination utensils were only designed for the serving of olives. They were never designed for the eating of olives. 

And the Fork’s Acceptance 
in 17th Century Europe

“It is a piece of refined coarseness to employ the fingers instead of the fork to effect certain operations at the dinner table, and on some other similar occasions. To know how and when to follow the fashion of Eden, and when that of more civilized life, is one of the many points which distinguish a gentleman from one not a gentleman; or rather, in this case, which shows the difference between a man of the world, and one who has not ‘the tune of the time.’ 

Cardinal Richelieu detected an adventurer who passed himself off for a nobleman, by his helping himself to olives with a fork. He might have applied the test to a vast many other things. Yet, on the other hand, a gentleman would lose his reputation, if he were to take up a piece of sugar with his fingers and not with the sugar-tongs.” – The Laws of Etiquette; or, Short Rules and Reflections for Conduct in Society, 1836 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Correct Gilded Age Dining

Above– An orange spoon with a gilded bowl, an orange peeler knife, a fruit knife and a citrus peeler. All 4 were helpful Victorian Era dining tools. – “The Ladies’ Home Journal affirms that the daintiest way to eat an orange is from a fork—that is, the skin and its coarse white lining are pared off with a sharp fruit knife, the orange is stuck on a fork and is eaten exactly as one would eat an apple.”

At the Table – The Correct Way of Serving and Eating Various Dishes

It is not an easy thing to eat an orange gracefully. The Ladies’ Home Journal affirms that the daintiest way to eat an orange is from a fork—that is, the skin and its coarse white lining are pared off with a sharp fruit knife, the orange is stuck on a fork and is eaten exactly as one would eat an apple. Cheese, says the same authority, may be taken between the fingers, or it may be put on a bit of bread with a knife and eaten on that, but a fork is not used with it. Artichokes are, of course, eaten with the fingers, each leaf being dipped in the dressing. 

All pastry is eaten from a fork, and it is an insult to the cook to touch it with a knife. In fact, your knife has no use, except for cutting or buttering something, and when it is resting, it should he laid sideways on your plate. Every vegetable can be eaten with a fork, the uses of a spoon being limited to a few desserts and for your coffee or teacup, and there its place is to repose in the saucer. Bouillon is drunk from the cups in which it is served; when it is jellied, it is eaten with a dessert spoon. Nothing excuses the chasing of a small particle of something to eat around your plate to polish it up. The old idea that one must eat every thing that is given to one no longer exists and the result is that children are not made gluttons. 

In drinking, remember to hold your goblet or wine glass by the stem, and not by the bowl. While watermelon is eaten with a fork, cantaloupe has served with it a dessert spoon. As it is customary nowadays, to have the salt served in open salt-cellars, it maybe mentioned that in helping one’s self, the salt should be put near the outer edge of one’s plate. In leaving the table it is not necessary to fold your napkin; instead, just as you rise, lay it on the table. – Red Bluff Daily News, 1892

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

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

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette and “the Right Fork”

Using Your Utensils

Using “first” forks — Cocktail forks, oyster forks, escargot forks, and the like, are used with the right hand only. If snail or escargot tongs are being used, they are held in the left hand to hold the snail shell in place.

All spoons are used with the right hand, including individual caviar spoons and caviar spades.

Using dessert forks alone— Pie forks, ice cream forks, fruit forks can all properly used in the right hand, if no cutting with a knife is involved, with one notable ex-ception being the mango fork. A mango fork is held in the left hand while using a fruit knife or fruit spoon in the right hand.

Using dessert spoons alone — Ice cream, pots de crème, and other soft desserts eaten with spoons in the right hand.

Using a dessert fork and spoon together — Dessert eaten using 2 utensils is nearly always done in the Continental style, except this is done with a fork and spoon as opposed to with a fork and knife. The fork is held in the left hand with tines facing down, and the spoon is held in the right hand. The fork is used to hold or keep a dessert in place as the spoon cuts off small bites. This works well with desserts such as Baked Alaska or certain types of cakes.

An exception to this rule is pie or cake, à la mode. These are both eaten with a dessert fork and spoon. The spoon is used to cut and then place a bite of cake or pie and a bit of ice cream on the fork, which is held in the right hand and used to eat the dessert.

For all other dining with a knife and fork, the fork is in the left hand and the knife in the right when dining in the Continental style.

Fork tines point down for all cutting and eating in Continental dining, save for stringy pasta.

Fork tines point down only for cutting food, in the American style of dining.

From the book, Reaching for the Right Fork... the evolution of tabletop utensils 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Corn on the Cob Etiquette

The American Corn on the Cob 

Etiquette Conundrum  

The serving in eating of corn on the cob has been an enduring issue for American authorities on table manners. In “Hints on Etiquette,” 1844, Charles Day decreed that rather than gnaw at the cob, the diner should scrape the kernels into his or her plate and eat them with a fork. Frederick Stokes’, “Good Form: Dinners Ceremonious and Unceremonious,” of 1890, contrasted the crude gnawing from end to end with the more polite grasping with a folded napkin or a folded doily. 

Food writer and Ladies Home Journal editor, Sarah Tyson Rorer, America's first dietitian, proposed more demanding method of scoring each row of kernels and pressing out the content with the teeth, leaving the hulls attached to the cob. The ever practical Emily Post simply discounted corn on the cob as suitable food for formal dining, yet her friends all thought she had lost her mind, when Post served barbecue at a Martha’s Vineyard afternoon tea.

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia  

Fork, Spork and Knork Etiquette

(Above) An Albert Coles, coin silver, pickle fork– These were popular in the mid-19th century. Often sold in sets with knives, for eating pickled foods, they fell in and out of fashion quickly. Foods like pickled eggs, pickled pigs feet, pickled peaches, pickled asparagus, etc... were  elegantly eaten by using these forks.

(Above) Corn on the cob with a wide variety of forks and holders.–Green corn was a popular Victorian era food to serve. Rarely seen on fine dining tables today, corn on its cob was served then, as finger bowls were also at the table for each guest.

(Above) Two different melon forks, one in silver plate with a hollow handle and the other, in sterling. In France, melon forks were usually sold in sets with knives. In the U.S., most were sold as individual forks for dining.

(Above) A pie, pickle or even a "Nelson fork" — Some fork designs were sold for different purposes in different regions of the U.S. and in Europe. Other utensils were modified a bit to suit new foods, as foods that were considered delicacies, fell into and out of,  fashion. A "Nelson fork" was a fork adapted for eating with one hand, after British Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson lost his arm while fighting Napoleon at Tenerife.

(Above) An individual, Victorian cheese fork. These can be brought out with the fruit and cheese course or placed for each guest above the plate with a fork and spoon for dessert.

                               

(Above) Two individual corn forks (or knorks - knife-fork combinations), a small and large, and one individual corn scraper. Corn forks were made with one side a bit thinner and sharp, for scraping the kernels from one's corn at the table, if one was not given a corn scraper or corn stripper. Corn scrapers or strippers, were used like forks, but they were designed with "teeth" to cut the kernels off a cob at the table. The rule that no more than 3 forks are to be set to the left of a place setting, meant that some forks or dining tools, were brought out with the food itself, for each guest. Otherwise, Victorian era place settings would be too large for a regular dining table to accommodate more than one guest at each side of the table.

I have a theory a bit different than the common belief shared by many who have written books on Victorian habits and dining. The majority of them propagate the belief that it was a fear of foods being tainted by other humans, which created such a demand for the vast amount of designs for silver utensils in late 19th to early 20th centuries. (With our abundant use of hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial soaps, what will future generations say about us?) It’s true, there were inventors with patents obtained for sanitary cups, clips for drinking glasses, utensils and straws, etc... during the late 1800s and early 1900s. But I believe it was a complex combination of factors that drove the rush to create new pieces of table silver. The first may have been what lay in tin cans. 

When a Parisian candy maker named Nicolas Appert won 12,000 francs in 1809, it was for his inventing a new way to preserve foods. Prior to that time, pickling or salting and drying were the preferred methods of preserving foods. Napoleon had offered the prize of 12,000 francs, while preparing to invade Russia. With severe malnutrition decimating his troops, he knew he needed another way of stocking and preserving foods for something as involved as his Russian campaign. Appert used widemouthed, corked glass bottles that he filled with food, and heated in boiling water to find that solution. This new method of safely preserving foods, led to the invention of “tinned foods” or, the tin can, by Englishman Peter Durand. Tin cans would soon be used for feeding the British navy and army. New “tinning” or canning also meant more foods were available to the masses, as spoilage was no longer an issue. Price was still a concern for most consumers outside the military, though. 

"I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?" –Comedian George Carlin ~ (Above) The smallest forks in the fork family are for cherries and berries. They also work well when eating kumquats. 

Early tinned and canned items were too expensive for those in the lower, and even middle-class income brackets, at the time. Sardines were one imported tinned food that the wealthy could afford to serve, so sardine servers, dishes and tongs, like those pictured, were offered in abundance at the time. Tinned sardines and other such foods, offered an elegant way to not only outdo one’s neighbors, but an easy way illuminate one’s home.

A very well lit home was coveted in an era when candlelight and gaslight were the only substitutes for the sun. Mirrors, tin ceilings, gold and the all important, silver dining accoutrements, combined with sparkling crystal, all reflected one’s well-placed candles and chandeliers. Pricey wall sconces were designed with numerous concave “reflectors,” adding to a sconce's output of light. The number one factor for such a variety of silver and gold laid out at one’s table was surely light.   

(Above) Combination fork and spoons, like these for terrapin (turtle soup) or ice cream and desserts, were very popular for entertaining in the Victorian era.

Another important factor was that once an inexpensive form of silver plating was devised – electroplating– , the ownership of silver was no longer limited to the wealthy. Housewives and new brides could afford much less expensive silver items, which certainly added to the growing numbers. As silver had only been available to the wealthier in society, an overwhelming public demand soon grew for utensils or servers, designed with anything or everything edible, or drinkable, in mind. 

Marketing strategies were clever, too. If you didn't know you “needed” silver for your table, advertisements in women’s magazines and newspapers, told you they were necessities. They were touted as “heirlooms of the future”, so even if you hadn't felt a great need for them, all your descendants would certainly appreciate your thoughtfulness. One wouldn’t want to deprive their grandchildren of orange spoons with gold-washed, vermeil bowls, or bonbon spoons, like those pictured? Of course not! –Etiquipedia© Site Editor, Maura J. Graber, from her book, “Reaching for the Right Fork”

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Forks for Gilded Age Etiquette

"The safest rule to remember about forks is that, for everything which may possibly be eaten with a fork or cut with a fork, a fork is to be preferred to any other piece of silver."

"Forks, we are told, did not become common until the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. The earliest known paragon of perfect manners, the Prioress in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, very evidently had never seen a fork. Instead, she is featured by Chaucer because 'well she could carry a morsel and well keep, that no drop fell upon her breast.' But, if forks were slow in coming into popularity, they have certainly arrived and are now the most important part of table service next to the actual food itself. 

An 1894 design for a pickle fork.  Many foods were still commonly home pickled at the time, as "tinned," or canned, foods remained quite expensive. Pickled carrots, asparagus, snap peas, a variety of fruits, eggs, etc... were still served regularly at the table.

A selection of oyster, lobster claw and fruit forks from the 1890s.

1. The safest rule to remember about forks is that, for everything which may possibly be eaten with a fork or cut with a fork, a fork is to be preferred to any other piece of silver. If it proves quite impossible to get the food safely on the fork without assistance of some sort, one may use a small piece of bread or roll or cracker in the left hand as a 'push bread.'" From Etiquette, Jr., by Mary E. Clark and Margery Closey Quigley 1926, Drawing by Erick Berry

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  1873 design for fruit forks ~ The inverted "umbrella was presumably to catch fruit or fruit juice, that could possibly escape while one ate.  Below is the ornate design for a handle for forks or other utensils.
  
  

  
  

  
  Below is another design from 1893. It is a "knork" or knife/fork combination utensil, designed to eat pie more easily.
  

  
  

                

  
  

       Below is another, more interesting tined pie fork, from 1897.

  
  

  
  
  

  

  
  

Compiled by contributor, and Etiquipedia site editor, Maura Graber, who has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, for over 30 years, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette.  She is also a writer, has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows. Maura was an on-air contributor to PBS in Southern California for 15 years, and has an odd love of strange and unique dining utensils.