Salads, Colonists, and Salad Forks

Though salad knives made their official debut in the 1920’s, salad forks were showing up on dining tables and in silver catalogs from 1885 on, so they were created right around the time that salads were making a resurgence in the U.S., as noted by Fannie Farmer in 1896. Salads “are now made in an endless variety of ways, and are composed of meat, fish, vegetables (alone or in combination) or fruits, with the addition of a dressing,” said Fannie.

Colonists brought salads to America and the Gilded Age brought salad forks to the table

With the earliest English colonists, and throughout the colonial period, kitchen gardens were tended in part for the wonderful salad ingredients they produced. Perhaps due to the urbanization and industrialization of America during the late 19th century, there was a falling off in the appreciation of salad. But by the 1890s they were gaining popularity again. 

Fannie Farmer commented in the 1896 edition of “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” that “Salads, which constitute a course in almost every dinner, but a few years since seldom appeared on the table. They are now made in an endless variety of ways, and are composed of meat, fish, vegetables (alone or in combination) or fruits, with the addition of a dressing,” said Fannie.

Once again Americans seem to be rediscovering salads the way they did in Fanny Farmer's day. John Evelyn would be delighted to learn that the American salad bowl is once again overflowing with delicate herbs, greens, wild mushrooms, flower petals, and a wide variety of other imaginative ingredients that bring delight to the eye as well as the taste buds.— Desert Sun, 1988

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

New Lettuce (aka Salad) Forks

A salad fork on the left and gilded lettuce forks (shown with a matching lettuce spoon on the right.) Lettuce forks and spoons soon became attached and were then known as “salad tongs.” The writer clearly had the two confused and also had no idea that salad forks were first introduced to the public in 1885.
Lettuce forks are for serving lettuce, thus the length of up to 9” and longer. Salad forks are a bit shorter than dinner forks. The gilded Towle salad fork above was also marketed as a “pickle fork,” however many salads were pickled up until fresh lettuce and greens, along with other perishable vegetables and fruits, were widely available in markets and as more people acquired refrigerators in their homes. This made fresh, green salads more popular and seen on more tables.

AN EDITORIAL writer in the Los Angeles Times sees a brighter future for Imperial valley lettuce growers as a result of the recent invention of a new table tool designated to simplify the problem of eating lettuce salad.

The Western Growers Protective association is given credit for introducing the new lettuce fork to a public that has been trying for several years to devise a graceful method of devouring lettuce leaves.

Probably our former fellow-townsman, C. B. Moore, had something to do with this. If he did, we ought to erect a monument to C. В.

FOLLOWING is the Times editorial:
"Not content with starting new religions and new architecture and new styles for the flappers, California has invented a new lettuce fork with a blade attachment to cut succulent salads. We are inventing a new etiquette to go with it.

"This naturally cuts the old-timers to the quick. We grow more lettuce in Imperial valley than anywhere else on the globe and something just had to be done so that so much of it would not be left on the plate. The Western Protective Association has taken the heroic initiative in the matter.

"Heretofore it was regarded in good form to twist the salad into a large gob and thrust it into the maw even as the hayfork jams the grass into the mow of the barn. Not even the best circles could see anything pleasant in the struggle to drape one's facial foliage around these large, unwieldy quantities of fodder.

"But with this new trick salad fork, with a combination like the old jackknife with a corkscrew and fifty-seven other varieties of tools, we are able to inhale lettuce with comfort and stimulate another of California's products.

"THE silversmiths are also said to be backing the innovation and that means that the best families will lend themselves to the cause. For many of them have stock in the concern or have mines and will be pleased to have old cutlery out of date.

"California has taken the orange out of the Christ- mas stocking and got it on the breakfast table. For a time it was in peril of being put up in prescriptions like spinach by the doctors; but it has turned the corner and can be gedunked at the soda fountains. The whole country is alkalizing its system by orange juice and we are picking the profits for our purses.

"Once we got the world full of prunes; but it woke up one morning and turned to fruit cocktail instead. It got grapefruit in its eye and hope in its heart. The great question a few years back was how to eat an orange. But now the spiffy are acquiring lettuce forks and the price of sterling silver is about to take a sudden advance."– By R.H. In the Calexico Chronicle, 1930

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

The Science of Salads

An assortment of Gilded Age salad forks, lettuce serving forks and one lettuce serving spoon — “Alexandre Dumas devotes more than 1,000 words in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine to demonstrating that salad is not natural food for man. Only ruminants, he writes, are equipped to deal with raw greenery in their stomachs, since raw plants are dissolved not by acids but by alkalis. It is, he says, an excess of civilization that has made us take to eating raw salads. The ultimate error is to make salad accompany a roast. To eat salad with haunch of venison, or with roast pheasant or woodcock is simply culinary heresy. One spoils the other.”

The rights and wrongs of the science of dining seem to arouse passions as much as politics or bridge, and nothing is more controversial than the right way to dress a salad.

Alexandre Dumas devotes more than 1,000 words in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine to demonstrating that salad is not natural food for man. Only ruminants, he writes, are equipped to deal with raw greenery in their stomachs, since raw plants are dissolved not by acids but by alkalis. It is, he says, an excess of civilization that has made us take to eating raw salads. The ultimate error is to make salad accompany a roast. To eat salad with haunch of venison, or with roast pheasant or woodcock is simply culinary heresy. One spoils the other. 

All game of haut gout, he considers, ought to be eaten by itself just with the sauce of its own juices. It is an act of great culinary impiety to allow your salad to be made by a servant. Salad is served at a moment when hunger is three-quarters assuaged and you need an aperitif to restore your appetite and thus it has to be perfect, prepared with loving skill and intelligence. Where, the inference is, will you find this except in the master or mistress of the house? And so the salad must be composed by one of them and at least an hour before it is due to be served. During that hour it should be turned three or four times.

Salad consists of vegetables to which certain aromatic herbs have been added, seasoned with salt, white pepper, oil, vinegar and sometimes with mustard and soya. Herbs, again, are of three kinds: pot-herbs, dressing-herbs and seasonings. There are six pot-herbs: sorrel, lettuce, white beet, mountain spinach (orach) spinach and purslane. Dressing- herbs are parsley, tarragon, chervil, chive, spring onion, savory, fennel, thyme, basil and tansy. There are twelve seasoning-herbs: garden cress, watercress, chervil, tarragon, burnet, samphire, hartshorn, lesser basil, purslane, balm and chives. When seasoning chicory you put at the bottom of the salad bowl a stale crust of bread rubbed with garlic to absorb surplus vinegar.

Until recently salad-dressing seems to have been a peculiarly French accomplishment. After the Revolution several of the aristocratic refugees in England and America made fortunes as salad-dressers. In London, a young man called d'Aubignac accumulated £80,000 in quite a short period from the exercise of this skill, in which he seems to have used considerable imagination, as he is said to have used perfumed vinegars, oils tasting of fruit, soy, ketchup and even caviare among his ingredients. — From “The Joy of Eating,” by Katie Stewart, 1937

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

Gilded Age Luncheon Etiquette

“If you cannot afford salad and dessert, choose the former by all means. The happiest closing to a real good dinner is a crisp salad well dressed, served with a bit of cheese and bread and butter or toasted cracker.” – Sarah Tyson Rorer, 1898 — Image of Towle lettuce serving fork and a matching Towle lettuce serving spoon, sitting alongside an individual Towle salad fork. All 3 feature gilding on the functional ends. Salad forks did not exist prior to 1885, making them creations of the Gilded Age.

It is well for people living in the country, and with a certain degree of style, to study up the methods of making salads and cold dishes, for these come in so admirably for luncheon that they often save a hostess great mortification. By attention to small details a very humble repast may be most elegant. 

A silver bread-basket for the thin slices of bread, a pretty cheese-dish, a napkin around the cheese, pats of butter in a pretty dish, flowers in vases, fruits neatly served— these things cost little, but they add a zest to the pleasures of the table.—From “Manners and Social Usages,” by Mrs. John Sherwood, 1884

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

How Lettuce Changed Etiquette

“Salad forks” were not heard of prior to their creation in 1885. Prior to that time, luncheon-sized forks were often used for salads. It took 41 years before they would be joined at the table with their own “lettuce knives” or “salad knives” — “In the American book of etiquette, according to J. T. Saunders, freight traffic manager for the Southern Pacific company, who says that lettuce knives must soon be added to the list of table cutlery required by the perfect hostess.”           

Lettuce Changed American Table Etiquette in 1926

California is writing a new paragraph in the American book of etiquette, according to J. T. Saunders, freight traffic manager for the Southern Pacific company, who says that lettuce knives must soon be added to the list of table cutlery required by the perfect hostess. 

“For ages past,” Saunders explained, “authorities on etiquette have insisted that lettuce at table must be cut, speared and conveyed to the mouth entirely with the salad fork. Just try this on a sector of crisp and tender giant California head lettuce, and you will quickly discover that it is not so simple as it sounds." Hence the need for a lettuce knife. 

“From 9,744 carloads in 1922, shipments of California lettuce to eastern markets this year will reach the amazing total of 27,000 carloads, a gain of almost 200 per cent in four years. In 1920 shippers on our coast division shipped only 62 carloads of the salad delicacy.      

Special lettuce serving forks, most often with lettuce serving spoons, were a Gilded Age neccesity. In fact, gilded tines were needed to help prevent corrosion to the silver, caused by citric acids, vinegar, etc... and other salad dressing ingredients.— Salads were not popular in the U.S., until the mid 1800s. Their popularity, when they did become fashionable, was due to the fact that they were seen as very French. And “salad” could mean many different types of dishes, across the U.S., not necessarily just what we view as salads today. A salad could be a dish of asparagus or something served in aspic.  Salads were also a delicacy, as they needed refrigeration to keep fresh longer. Those who could afford large ice cellars, could also afford perishable salad greens.

This year, from the same territory, approximately 12,800 carloads will be shipped. “Equally startling has been the growth of Imperial Valley lettuce shipments. From 1,079 carloads in the 1918-19 season, the Valley will, during the coming season, send eastward more than 16,700 carloads of lettuce.” The famous California “Iceberg” head lettuce, developed and perfected by Imperial Valley growers, has created thousands of new lettuce lovers throughout the land. 

“There is no finer lettuce grown anywhere than in California and to this bears witness the fact that all the nation now eats lettuce. Fifteen years ago lettuce was regarded as a luxury, while today it is as commonplace in the American home as oatmeal and coffee.” — The Sausalito News, November 1926 

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