Etiquette Origins of Table Utensils

Ancient Roman dinner guests, depicted lounging on a triclinium... “If they were too full to finish their food, they could wrap the leftovers in a napkin to take home.”— “The first napkin was a lump of dough the Spartans called ‘apomagdalie,’ a mixture cut into small pieces and rolled and kneeded at the table, a custom that led to using sliced bread to wipe the hands. In Roman antiquity, napkins known as sudaria and mappae were made in both small and large lengths. The sudarium, Latin for 'handkerchief,' was a pocket-size fabric earned to blot the brow during meals taken in the warm Mediterranean climate. The mappa was a larger cloth spread over the edge of the couch as protection from food taken in a reclining position. The fabric was also used to blot the lips. Although each guest supplied his own mappa, on departure mappae were filled with delicacies leftover from the feast, a custom that continues today in restaurant ‘doggy bags’.”

WE give little thought to the origin of the table utensils in daily use, but a recent French writer throws interesting light on the subject. The old Romans, it seems, not only breakfasted, but dined and supped, if not in bed, reclining upon couches, and not until the days of Charlemagne were stands introduced, the guests sitting around them upon cushions. 

In the Middle Ages, when a table and benches with backs were an innovation, the ultimatum of luxury and ease seemed reached. The food was eaten from a kettle with side-handle, not unlike a porringer, but after a time thick rounds of bread were cut from the loaf to serve as plates.

Of very remote date is the salt-cellar (as the use of salt. belongs to the earliest ages); at Roman and Greek banquets it occupied a prominent place, and was termed by Homer, "divine." The salt cellar was made for the rich from silver or gold, and was a family heirloom. Francis I had several of exquisite workmanship, the chasing credited to Benvenuto Cellini.

At the Louvre are specimens made from faience for the wonderful service of Diana of Portiers or Henry II. In contrast to this elegance, salt-holders were formed from common earthenware, and at the ordinary repasts of the poor pieces of bread were cut and hollowed out, and placed at each plate to hold the salt. Individual, it seems, even if crude No. mention is made of the castor until the sixteenth century, and then it is termed "cruet-stand."

The knife is very old; but not until the tenth century is it classed as a table appointment; while spoons are also very antique, mentioned as early as the seventeenth century . The old Greeks and Romans knew by experience that “fingers were made before forks” and used them accordingly. Even in the Middle Ages a fork was a curio, and to Henry III, we owe its establishment as a table convenience.

From the most remote period comes the drinking-cup, in the Middle Ages formed from precious metals, and later jeweled, inscribed, and ornamented. From fair Venice in the fifteenth century come glasses, probably very unlike the delicate things of beauty and value that we style “Venetian glass,” but nevertheless just an rosy lips quaffed the water and wine then as now, and eyes were as bright, smiles as sweet, and homes as dear in that long ago

When we consider the progress in table appointments – to dainty service at command in this nineteenth century, in contrast with the slender opportunities of the wives of those old Roman and Greeks for handsome entertaining – we resolve with what we have therewith to be content.– The Pottery Gazette (London, Greater London, England) Sat, Apr 1, 1893

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

When the Fork First Evolved

Selection of early types of forks. Originating in Africa and the Middle East, and considered truly an oddity at first, forks slowly grew popular in royal European courts. Books on courtly manners and courtly customs were also being written and more frequently read, though most of the European public was oblivious to them. Silver utensils of all sorts, along with specialized tableware, was created for the wealthy, upper classes. Many travelers carried their utensils with them, either in cased sets or as foldable articles. 
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We must wait 4,000 years before we find the fork. Or, as a French writer on table etiquette has said, “from the creation of the world to the beginning of the seventeenth century, man ate only with his fingers.” This is, however, a mistake of 400 years…
-Image source Etiquipedia private library and collection

Table Manners… How They Have Evoluted (sic) Out of Savage Customs

How did table manners arise? Where do they come from? Like Topsy and other human institutions, “they just growed.” And it is surprising how slow of development has been the sentiment of cleanliness and neatness which was the principal cause of the invention of the implements and dishes used in serving food and eating.

In good old paleolithic times, when human beings were always within 24 hours of starvation, man ate only with his fingers. He hunted for his food in the woods or by the seashore, and he picked the bones clean. Two table articles are found among uncivilized people – the knife and the spoon. The knife was originally a weapon of attack and defense. It was used for cutting and carving flesh, but its convenience in eating soon became apparent.

The origin of the spoon is uncertain. It must have been invented at a very ancient date, for it is found among people that have never come into contact with civilization. The necessity of having some implement for dipping water seems to have led first to the invention of the calabash or the use of the cocoanut shell and later on to the spoon.

We must wait 4,000 years before we find the fork. Or, as a French writer on table etiquette has said, “from the creation of the world to the beginning of the seventeenth century, man ate only with his fingers.” This is, however, a mistake of 400 years, for we find forks as early as the thirteenth century, when they are mentioned as being kept for special purposes. Thus John, Duke of Brittany, is said to have used a fork to pick up “soppys,” and Piers Graveston had three for eating pears with.– Lee J. Vance in Lippincott's, 1895

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

Zigzagging Table Manners

It’s in everyone’s best interest that we all retain our senses of humor and our best manners. Here’s a fun article about the history of our table manners. It’s full of facts that you can use as small talk, when attempting to gracefully sit through one more holiday with a mask on your face! — The most cherished, family-oriented holidays are just around the corner and we’re still in the midst of a global pandemic. Celebrating with any sense of tradition or normalcy, seems unattainable with the crazy sounding restrictions put in place across the globe. In California, the Governor has issued these restrictions:   “No more than three households can gather together at a time. Gatherings must be held outside and should last less than two hours. Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized. Also, singing, chanting, and shouting are strongly discouraged.”

For the holidays, a brief history of manners

According to Emily Post, “All rules of table manners are made to avoid ugliness.” They exist to shield us from other people’s effusions and emissions — and to conceal our own. Manners can act as a lubricant, minimizing social friction, but mostly their purpose is protective. They muffle our primal urges. In effect, they turn our natural warrior-like selves into elegant courtiers.

That may be something to keep in mind today, especially if you find yourself seated between fastidious Uncle Eric and belligerent Cousin Kenneth at the Thanksgiving table.

Early guides to manners were fixated on proper behavior at table. In medieval England, meals were occasions not only for celebration, but also for diplomacy. A leading arbiter of manners was Petrus Alfonsi, who served at the court of King Henry I. He urged his readers (male, aristocratic) not to speak with their mouths full or let crumbs shower from their lips. King David I of Scotland, who spent time in Henry’s household, proposed that any of his subjects who learned to eat more neatly should get a tax rebate.

Disappointingly, that idea never caught on. Yet the prescriptions of writers such as Petrus Alfonsi endured. They were amplified by later writers such as Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutchman who produced a systematic account of manners in the early 16th century, in which he gave guidance on how to share a bed (don’t steal all the blankets for yourself) and how to pass wind (mask the sound with a well-timed cough).

Later that century it was Italians who dominated the field. None was more influential than Baldassare Castiglione, who wrote suavely about the need to control one’s social space. His key concept was sprezzatura, a stylishly effortless excellence: The truly decorous individual must be both self-possessed and unassertive.

Castiglione thought of manners as a technology, and during the Renaissance there were real technical developments that changed notions of correct behavior. None of these was more significant than the introduction of the table fork: Previously there had been large crude forks for hoicking food from a shared dish, but now the fork became an implement for the individual.

It was the traveler Thomas Coryat who introduced the table fork to Britain. When he returned from Italy in 1608 with this fancy novelty, he met with a torrent of ridicule. Twenty-five years after Coryat’s Italian jaunt, the first table fork reached America — a gift for John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the accompanying missive, the sender suggested Winthrop use his discretion in handling this precious item, and Winthrop saw fit to keep it in a special leather case. Gradually, as forks became popular, they brought finesse to the act of eating, making it possible, for instance, to consume berries without staining one’s fingers.

Nearly 300 years later Emily Post reflected on the need for forks (though “If you are able to eat a peach in your fingers and not smear your face … [you may] continue the feat”). Parsing such matters, she was the inheritor of traditions at once profuse and prolix. She had to concede that among those rules of the table “there are a number of trifling decrees of etiquette that are merely finical, unreasonable, and silly.” She cited as an example the insistence that one shouldn’t cut salad into small pieces. She went on to damn those who choose to “condemn the American custom of eating a soft-boiled egg in a glass, or cup, because it happens to be the English fashion to scoop it through the ragged edge of the shell.”

It was George Bernard Shaw, of course, rather than this doyenne of American social niceties, who supposedly observed that Americans and Britons are “divided by a common language.” That assessment may be a little less apt where manners are concerned than in questions of vocabulary. Yet while most of the essentials are the same on both sides of the Atlantic, there are a few clear differences between what’s normal in Los Angeles and what holds true in London.

Comment on this gap tends to veer into rueful specifics: A Californian friend of mine complains that the British have no grasp of the potluck dinner. Alternatively, it drifts toward generalizations about American directness and British reserve, or Americans’ comparatively fluid sense of social class.

But there is one really salient difference — and we observe it at table. In the U.S., when food needs cutting with a knife, you cut a bite, then lay aside the knife and transfer your fork to your right hand. Then, with the fork’s tines pointing upward, you pick up one bite at a time.

By contrast, the British keep the fork in the left hand and don’t lay the knife down. The American cut-and-switch method, which Post termed “zigzag,” may have been influenced by fashionable French practices in the early 19th century. Other theories abound. The zigzag technique may stem from the fact that early American forks were unwieldy and needed careful manipulation, or from the belief — a hangover from medieval culture — that it is best to put down a knife when it’s not in use. It may also have been calculated to draw attention, as Coryat once did, to the sheer magnificence of one’s modish fork.

As globalization fosters a new international standard of manners — pragmatic rather than necessarily refined — the zigzag method seems to be in the first stages of decline. Those who stick with it are preserving something distinctively American. They are also hanging on to a form of behavior that, like so much in the realm of manners, favors tortuous delicacy above blunt efficiency. — By Henry Hitchings, the author of, “Sorry! The English and Their Manners,” 2013

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

Who Brought Us the Fork?

Will the Real Byzantine Princess Responsible, Please Stand Up?

For those living in the 18th century who couldn’t afford the silver or gold of royalty, nobility or the upper classes, wood and steel and other materials were ideal for making two-tined forks with which to dine. But who was the Byzantine Princess of record to first publicly brought a small, gold, two-timed fork to her lips? Maria Argyropoulina? Maria Sforza Visconti? Princess Argila? We at Etiquipedia are having a tough time unraveling the mystery.

Two days ago I received an email from Dobrochna Giedwidz (@etiquette_now on Instagram), offering Etiquipedia the name of the Byzantine Princess who has long been credited with introducing Western Europe to the “table fork.” Grateful to be able to add the name to our Etiquette Encyclopedia, I sought to learn more about Princess Maria Argyropoulina’s use of forks. Sadly, it hasn’t been easy. The following is what I have found so far:

File Under “How it Started”

FORKS: The table fork is comparatively modern. It was first introduced in Venice by a Byzantine princess, and its use rapidly spread throughout Italy. In an inventory of the court of Charles V of France, dated 1370, there is mention of silver forks; but for some time the use of those instruments was satirized. Certain French and Scottish convents even forbade them as sinful. Their original form was two-tined; The three and four-tined varieties came later. — San Pedro News Pilot, 1921

The Genesis of the Fork 

By the way, it is just about 900 years ago since the fork made its appearance in Europe. In 995 A.D. a son of the doge, Pietro Orseolo, wedded in Venice the Byzantine Princess Argila, who produced at the wedding breakfast a silver fork and gold spoon. Then the high Venetian families followed suit, and these martyrs to fashion pricked their lips with the new instrument, though the church opposed the fashion as insult to Providence. The fork prospered, however, and in the next 360 years it had reached Florence and spread over Italy. In 1579, it had traveled as far as France, and in 1608 a traveler brought it direct to England. — London Times, 1897

The Fork

In the ancient world the fork for eating was unknown, and the well-bred sought to display as much delicacy as possible in the operation of conveying food to the mouth with the fingers. It was a thousand years ago when the first mention of the “forchetta” was made in Italian literature, and it was then spoken of as introduced into Venice by a Byzantine princess. 

It was at first not favorably received, and for two centuries came little into use, either in Italy or the rest of Europe. No mention of a fork was made in the catalogue of the table furnishings at the wedding of Maria Sforza Visconti as late as 1493. Still, the 15th century saw its use spreading in France, and the 16th in Germany. It was not until the 17th century that it was introduced in England. — Humboldt Times, 1882

Waiter There’s a Fork in My Soup

The year is 1004 and at the party celebrating her marriage to the son of the doge of Venice, Maria Argyropoulina, niece to the emperor of Byzantium, has scandalised the guests. Her crime: using a fork to eat. At the time, people generally cut up food with knives and transferred it to their mouths with their fingers. Forks did exist, but they were large, two-pronged implements used for toasting or carving meat. Occasionally, people used smaller versions to fish things out of jars. Maria, however, used one of these to put food in her mouth. 

Her wayward behaviour was immediately condemned by the clergy. One priest declared that “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers.” When Maria died of the plague two years later, it was seen as divine punishment for her decadence. Yet today we would look down on anyone who didn’t use a fork. Its transformation from a heretical utensil into an everyday one is a parable of technological adoption. — From an article by Tom Standage, 1843 Magazine, 2018 

 

We are still doing the research to verify that the Byzantine Princess who first started the use of the “table fork,” was indeed Princess Maria Argyropoulina. Maria Argyropoulina and the “Byzantine Princess Argila,” are one in the same, according to several sources. We also found this notation on Maria, “she was probably the ‘wife of a doge’” alluded to by the Benedictine monk and later Saint, Peter Damian, “criticizing her use of fork, perfumes and dew for bathing.”

We are guessing that Princess Maria Argyropoulina (aka Princess Maria Argila), has little or nothing to do with Maria Sforza Visconti and the lack of forks mentioned with regard to her wedding. Maybe we are wrong, or dates have been confused, or she is somehow, in some way, related to Maria Argyropoulina. But it seems rather odd to have another Byzantine Princess Maria’s name connected to the fork’s introduction to Western Europe, so we will continue to search for more on this subject. We also look forward to hearing more from Dobrochna Giedwidz in the future.— Site Editor, Maura J. Graber

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

Etiquette and Fork History

Had the luxurious Romans been users of forks, some specimens of the implement would certainly have been found in the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. But though they fed themselves with their fingers, it must not be imagined that the medievalists were altogether forkless. – Shown left to right- A modern 2-tined appetizer fork, a 19th c. berry fork and a 19th c. strawberry fork.

Dining, Fingers and Forks 

“Fingers were made before forks,” says the familiar adage that had its origin in the warm disdain with which our ancestors of the seventeenth century repudiated the Italian table-fork as a fantastic and even impious contrivance.
Products of necessity, the first culinary forks were devised for the benefit of cooks bent on withdrawing meat from a boiling caldron. The Greek creagra –a staff, fitted at the lower end with a hook or with prongs that bore a distant resemblance to human fingers—was a crude pot-fork, which, though greatly serviceable to cooks, would have been of no convenience to a reclining gourmand. Possessing several varieties of this kitchen tool, the Romans, notwithstanding their care for the caprice as well as the comfort of epicurian feasters, never produced a table fork. 

Caylus and Grignon, indeed, maintained that table forks were not absolutely unknown to imperial gastronomers; but their opinion, which never had the testimony of sufficient facts, has been altogether discredited. Had the luxurious Romans been users of forks, some specimens of the implement would certainly have been found in the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. But though they fed themselves with their fingers, it must not be imagined that the medievalists were altogether forkless. Forty years since, a fork, of Anglo-Saxon manufacture, was discovered in Wiltshire, England, under circumstances which leave no room for doubt that it was made at least as early as the latter part of the ninth century. Another Anglo-Saxon fork, described in Ackerman’s Pagan Saxondom, is a bone handled implement, that some foppish thane may have used, to the mingled surprise and contempt of his simpler acquaintances. And from that period to the close of the Tudor time there is evidence that our ancestors had a few forks long before they were commonly placed on the daily table as necessary articles. 

Queen Elizabeth had at least three forks, one of “crystal, garnished with gold and sparks of garnets: another of coral, slightly garnished with gold, a third of gold garnished with two little rubies, two little pearls pendant, and a little coral.” But it is obvious that these daintily set and jeweled tools were never meant for serious use. Presents from courtiers, who sought the Royal smile with gifts curious for their costly whimsicalness, her highness regarded them as toys fitted for the jewel casket rather than for use at the table. She may have used one of them to pick a sweetmeat or a candied fruit from a dish of syrup, but it certainly never occurred to her to put them into sides of venison or the breast of Michelmas goose. To the last, whether eating in public or private, the Virgin Queen fingered her victuals, and would have imputed sheer madness to any courtier who had prophesied that ere another century had passed no member of the royal family would be able to do likewise without arousing the disgust of all beholders. – Albert Gilman, 1908

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 

Etiquette, Diplomacy and Forks

Poland brings up table manners in chopper feud with France

October 2016
WARSAW (AFP) - Poland's deputy defence minister last week claimed that Poles taught the French how to use forks, as a diplomatic row raged over the handling of a failed multi-billion euro helicopter deal.

He spoke after Paris withdrew the Polish delegation's invitation to the Euronaval industry fair in France this month, amid tension over the breakdown in talks aimed at Poland buying Airbus choppers.

"The French side officially invited us a long time ago and now they are showing us the door," Deputy Minister Bartosz Kownacki said on the TVN24 private news channel.

"But these are the people we taught to eat with a fork a couple of centuries ago, which may explain their behaviour today."

He was referring to the fact that the fork was introduced to France by French King Henry III, who had earlier been elected king of Poland.

Historians are however divided on the origin of that particular fork: some say the king discovered it during a stay in Venice after leaving Poland.

Others believe he really did become acquainted with the utensil in Poland, where the fork was brought over half a century earlier by Poland's Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza.

Kownacki's comments were heavily condemned by the liberal opposition as well as the spokeswoman of the governing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, Beata Mazurek, who described them as "unfortunate" and "not very diplomatic".

"Minister Kownacki is perhaps the first politician to commit diplomatic suicide by fork," the Polityka weekly commented on its website.

Last week, Poland halted talks with Airbus to buy 50 of its Caracal helicopters, drawing a furious response from chief executive Tom Enders who said his company had never been treated so badly by any government.

The spat has ratcheted up diplomatic tensions between Warsaw and Paris, which was backing Airbus in the process, leading French President Francois Hollande to postpone a visit to Warsaw.

There is disagreement over who actually ended the negotiations.

On Wednesday, several media outlets reported the cancellation of Poland's invite to Euronaval, citing an official letter received at the Polish embassy in Paris.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed the cancellation to AFP in Paris.

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

Renaissance Etiquette and Manners

Etiquette and manners were a response to the violence and crude behaviors run rampant in burgeoning European cities. They were  the means of reinforcing social order and distinguishing the privileged class from everyone else. It was at the dinner table, that these newly defined codes of conduct were especially important.

Italy was one of the leaders of the 16th century and 17th century cultural revolution, and that included table manners. Italian poet Giovanni della Casa advised in “Galateo,” his 1558 book on manners: “One should not comb his hair nor wash his hands in public... The exception to this is the washing of the hands when done before sitting down to dinner, for then it should be done in full sight of others, even if you do not need to wash them at all, so that whoever dips into the same bowl as you will be certain of your cleanliness.” 

Taking into account that one's hands were also one’s “utensils” for hundreds of years, this advice was truly of utmost importance. In his study on the social customs of this period, sociologist Norbert Elias noted that “In good society one does not put both hands into the dish. It is most refined to use only three fingers of the hand. ... Forks scarcely exist, or at most for taking meat from the dish.”

Some of the earliest known uses of forks with food occurred in Ancient Egypt, where large forks were used as cooking utensils. The personal table fork was most likely invented in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, where they were in common use by the 4th century, though the origins may even go back to Ancient Greece, before the Roman period. By the 9th century, according to records, a similar utensil known as a barjyn was in limited use in Persia within some elite circles. By the 10th century, the table fork was in common use throughout the Middle East. Forks were originally viewed by most in Western Europe, as excessively refined. Forks were also viewed, in the case of men, as a sign of effeminacy.

The custom of Western Europeans using table forks as dining implements began in Italy. They were at first a hit, but forks were slow to catch on in Northern Europe. The use of forks to get food from plate to mouth, didn't gain wide acceptance in Northern Europe until the 17th century—and even then, only the well-to-do could afford them. 

Spoons were communally used—making the etiquette of eating soups a delicate matter. "If what is given is rather fluid," Dutch theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam writes, "take it on a spoon for tasting and return the spoon after wiping it on a napkin.

Some human behaviors were deemed permissible at the dinner table. On passing gas, Erasmus wrote, “If it is possible to withdraw, it should be done alone. But if not, in accordance with the ancient proverb, let a cough hide the sound.” Most modern etiquette books advise that “civilized folk will protect others from any sounds or smells that may be displeasing.”

This isn't to say that all Renaissance manners are indeed outdated. On respecting fellow diners’ personal space, Giovanni Della Casa wrote, “It is also an unsuitable habit to put one's nose over someone else's glass of wine or food to smell it.” And Erasmus advised, “It is rude to offer someone what you have half eaten yourself; it is boorish to redip half-eaten bread into the soup.” 

Even modern science shows that a great means of spreading bacteria, is re-dipping partially-eaten foods. It certainly gives you an idea of what Renaissance society was trying to improve upon—and how far we've come since that time period. –Some of our sources; Smithsonian.com, 2011 and leitesculinaria.com

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

Etiquette and Europe’s Dining History

At the head table, the most important people sat in the middle, at center stage as it were, and the lesser people toward either end.

In Western Europe in the late Middle Ages, at great formal banquets, both the diners and the dinner were the show. The host and his special guests would sit along one side of the table set at the head of the great hall of the castle. This allowed the other diners to view the actions of the great and powerful. At the head table, the most important people sat in the middle, at center stage as it were, and the lesser people toward either end. At some point down the table were placed great salt holders, or salt cellars. This evolved into a natural delineation of status among the diners at the head table. One was either above the salt, that is, close to the important people, or below the salt, with the "hoi polloi."

The French made Burghley Nef salt cellar, circa 1527-1528. It is nautilus shell with parcel-gilt silver mounts, raised, chased, engraved and cast, and pearls, and is on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The proximity to which the nef as a salt cellar was placed next to a guest was indicative of their status. Some nefs held not only salt, but expensive spices and even napkins. Nefs were a tour de force for silversmiths and consequently, highly desirable objects for royal and noble households.

In accounts of medieval dinners a great deal of attention is paid to who sat where. The host sat in the middle of the "high table," so called because it was often placed on a platform. The table was set up on the stage so that the others could watch what their "betters" were doing and how they behaved. This custom is still followed today in some of the old college dining rooms at Cambridge University, England, and at public banquets.

During the Middle Ages, the set-up of the tables, and table manners themselves, were very important. Diners were seated according to their social class at tables of varying heights. Reserved for members of the clergy or, if no clergy were in attendance, the highest in the social class such as the king and queen, were the highest tables. Steel knives, silver spoons, dishes for salt, silver cups, and "mazers." Mazers were shallow, oftentimes silver-rimmed, wooden bowls that soups were drunk from.            

The tables for the other diners were often placed at right angles to the main table. These diners were so far off the social scale, they did not merit being ranked as above or below the salt. Women were even further off the social scale. At first, the wives of the nobles when not even allowed at great banquets and were relegated to a spectators' gallery. Later, they were allowed to sit at the table in a group well below the salt. 

Entertainments were given between the "mets," a medieval term for main course of the dinner. The entertainment might be short plays, songs by troubadours, animal acts, dancing, jesters, or juggling. Many dinners were for political show, and on really special occasions, pageants were performed.  Several of these were so noteworthy that they are mentioned in some history books. One such dinner was the Banquet of the Vow of the Pheasant, given by the Duke of Burgundy in 1453. 

Footman brought out a pheasant for each knight in attendance and placed before him. Each knight vowed by the pheasant and before God to abstain from whatever action his imagination conjured up-- to sleep in a bed, to change his clothes, and so on-- until Constantinople had been reconquered from the Ottoman Turks, who had captured it that year.

An anonymous painting of the Banquet du Voeu du Faisan, (aka "Banquet of the Oath of the Pheasant) was a banquet given by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy on February 17, 1454 in Lille, now in France. Its purpose was to promote a crusade against the Turks, who had taken Constantinople the year before, though the crusade never took place. The knights had come to their senses in the days following the meal and did not try to take back Constantinople.

The vow created a sensation as Constantinople had been thought to be impregnable, and all Christians were humiliated and terrified of the idea of the city in Muslim hands.

Unfortunately for Christendom, the knights came to their senses in the days following the meal and did not try to take back Constantinople.

Guests were given light tidbits to eat while watching the shows. In time, such dishes came to be called “entremets,” literally meaning “between the Mets.” The dinner itself was full of pageantry to entertain and impress those in attendance. The food was brought in in a procession, often with flute players leading the way. The less important foods, called “entrees” came in and were laid out first, building up to the presentation of the piece de resistance, which might be a full roasted ox or a roasted pheasant with its skin and feathers still attached.

A pheasant in flight, as opposed to on one's table.

In time, kings and other nobility found it rather wearisome to be on display. They just wanted to eat with other important people, their friends and allies, in privacy. These intimate meals moved from the great hall to the lord's private living areas. The table changed from a long, relatively narrow strip of wood with seating on only one side, to a square or oblong table where people could sit on all sides. Status was still gained, however, by sitting close to the lord or other notables, and the women were grouped either at another table or the end of the table away from the host.

The wider tables allowed more food to be put on the table itself. This in turn permitted far greater displays of food. The table would almost crack under the weight of joints of meat, fish, fouls, and side dishes. With diners on all sides of the table, however, it was not possible to bring each dish in after people sat down. The table had to be largely set before the diners arrived, which meant that the food would get cold while the diners filed in to take their places. Essentially, the nobles gained the ability to talk and dine intimately with their companions at the expense of hot meals. This was not as great a loss as it might appear to us today.

17th century Dutch, steel-bladed knife and steel-tined fork, with carved ivory handles.

Up until the 19th century, the cooking area was always set well away from the main part of the house lest a cooking fire get out of control and burn everything down. Thus the food lost a good bit of heat while being carried to the dining room.

Over time, what it started out a small private meals grew into pageants in their own right. This came about in the 17th century, when absolute monarchs ruled most of Europe. 

In keeping with the ethos of the era, every aspect of the king's life was made a display. Vast an elaborate meals were one way to assert power, wealth, and status, and they once again moved back into public view. But, this time, women fully participated as the bold innovation of alternating men and women at the dinner table took hold. This practice arrived in England from Holland in the 1600s and was known as the Dutch style of seating. The practice of alternating men and women at the dinner table, arrived in England from Holland in the 1600s and was known as the “Dutch” style of seating.

The last ingredient in the evolution of formal Victorian dining came about the early 1800's, as the combined weight of England and Russia was defeating the military genius of Napoleon. Ironically, even as the French were losing on the battlefield, they were about to emerge victorious on the culinary front. They developed a highly sophisticated culinary style, drawing in large part upon what they learned from the Italians.

Catherine de Medici of Florence, the great granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, married the future King of France, Henry II in 1533.

Italian cooks and courtiers came to France in 1533 when fourteen year old Catherine de Medici of Florence, great granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, married the future King of France, Henry II. Their arrival helped transform French cooking and manners. New tastes and flavors were introduced, along with new dishes, such as sweetbreads, truffles, and artichoke hearts. Prior to this, the Italians had looked down on the French. It has been said that before Catherine's arrival, “all the French had was raw military power. Afterward, they were on their way to haute cuisine.”

Numerous sources were used for this post, including Site Editor, Maur J. Graber, Demita Usher, the books “The Rituals of Dinner,” “Forgotten Elegance,” and Lillian Eichler’s books on etiquette.

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Etiquette and the History of Forks

      

An assortment of fork designs, for everything from Victorian green corn, to baked potatoes, bread, butter, ice cream and cheese.

Early Forks and Use in Europe

Thomas Coryat was an English traveller and writer of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean age (c. 1577 – 1617). He is principally remembered for two volumes of writings he left regarding his travels, often on foot, through Europe and parts of Asia. He is credited with introducing the table fork to England, with “Furcifer” (Latin: fork-bearer, rascal) which then became one of his nicknames. The fork he described had two tines. Since then, forks have been designed with many more than 2 tines. Some forks have up to 7 or 8, depending on what one is serving.

               

Antique melon forks ~ Perfect for cantaloupes, watermelons, honeydew melons, etc. Though the fork’s early history is obscure, the fork as a kitchen and dining utensil is believed by some to have originated in the Roman Empire, or perhaps in Ancient Greece. Others believe the fork’s origins to be in Africa or the Middle East. 

The origins of personal table forks are believed to be in the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, when, according to “1843 Magazine” at the party celebrating her marriage to the son of the doge of Venice in 1004, Byzantine Princess, Maria Argyropoulina, niece to the emperor of Byzantium, scandalized the guests by using a fork to eat. Prior to that, forks were large, two-pronged utensils used for toasting or carving foods, and smaller versions could be used to retrieve food from jars or other containers, but no one had used one to eat with publicly. Her actions were immediately condemned. One priest declared that “‘God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers.’ When Maria died of the plague two years later, it was seen as divine punishment for her decadence.”

Use of the fork spread slowly during the first millennium CE and then spread into southern Europe during the second millennium. Forks did not become common in northern Europe until the 18th century and were not commonly used to eat in North America until the 19th century. By the mid 1800s, forks were being designed for nearly every type of food, and were considered necessary to every proper home's table.

It is common knowledge (and a flattering social myth for us) that our own ancestors used to have very different -- and much cruder -- table manners from those we practice today. We have “come on,” in other words; we have “progressed.” The simplest historical novel or movie can make an exotic effect by presenting a scene in which dinner guests gnaw meat straight off bones gripped in their greasy fists, then hurl the remains into the corners of the room. These, the audience accepts without difficulty, were the manners of the past, before we became modern and civilized. (This sense of superiority does not prevent us from feeling proud, at the same time, of modern simplicity and lack of pomp. We are as capable of despising our ancestors for their tradition-bound complexity as for their rudimentary standards of propriety.) 

Forks had also to be made and sold, then produced in versions which more and more people could afford, as they slowly ceased being merely unnecessary and became the mark of civilized behavior. 

Manners have indeed changed. They were not invented on the spot, but developed into the system to which we now conform. Since manners are rituals and therefore conservative -- part of their purpose is always conservation -- they change slowly if at all, and usually in the face of long and widespread unwillingness. Even when a new way of doing things has been adopted by a powerful elite group -- using forks instead of fingers, for example -- it may take decades, even centuries, for people generally to decide to follow suit. Forks had not only to be seen in use and their advantages successfully argued; they had also to be made and sold, then produced in versions which more and more people could afford, as they slowly ceased being merely unnecessary and became the mark of civilized behaviour. After the eleventh-century date of the first extant document describing (with wonder) the sight of someone using one, the fork took eight centuries to become a utensil employed universally in the West. —From Margaret Visser’s, “The Rituals of Dinner” 

“It’s a dinglehopper!” Scuttle the seagull, answering an inquisitive mermaid Ariel, after she presents a dinner fork for his expert identification of a human item that she is unfamiliar with, in Disney’s 1989 The Little Mermaid ~ From “Let Them Eat Cake... The Strange Saga of the Mango Fork and the Unique Dining Habits of the Dutch” by Etiquipedia Site Editor, Maura Graber 

Meet Fork In Box. Fork, meet reader. “Meet Fork in Box” was the misspelled listing I found on eBay that allowed me to snag my second Dutch mango fork. Obviously a misspelling, I am sure the German Ebay seller who listed this beauty meant to list a “meat fork in box”. Before I go any further however, I should tell you a bit of my history with this odd utensil. In reality, I have never met a fork I didn’t like. My preoccupation with forks began not too long after Disney’s Ariel made her landing at the box office. Katie, my daughter, was almost three. She was enthralled with the precocious sea maiden who had red hair the color of her own. By the time the VHS tape was running continuously at home, I was starting an etiquette business for children and teens. The majority of the kids I taught were so used to fast foods, they rarely ate at a family dinner table. Showing them interesting and odd looking forks, along with other unusual utensils, was a way I found that kept kids interested when I talked of setting the table at home. I needed to do something to catch their wandering attentions, and strange utensils filled that need. 

Several Dutch mango forks ~ Many Dutch feel these forks are better suited to cake. All of these pictured are Dutch, save the fork on the far right. It was from South America. 

My husband was great at sussing out unique forks for me in the beginning. We stopped in thrift and antiques shops to find odd things for the table that were relatively inexpensive. Utensils over $10.00 seemed pricey. After all, these were props for my students to pass around and examine. Sales of very old used books on silver at the local library were how I did my research on pieces we’d found. Some were sold for only a quarter. I use them for reference still. 

Anything Victorian was popular during the 1990s. Tea rooms were sprouting up in malls, while magazines and books devoted to the subject were readily available. Over the next few years, as my collection of table silver oddities grew, my forays for the rarest of forks became more time consuming. Any weekend outing meant a side trip to a thrift shop or antiques mall. I was asked to give talks and lectures on not just my collection, but how people in America once dined with grace and forethought. At least more forethought than wondering if “... you want fries with that?”, before being handed a bag of fast food through the car window.– From various sources including the book, “Let Them Eat Cake,” by Maura J. Graber

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia