Etiquette for New Salad Forks in 1930

Salad forks, since their first arrival on the table in 1885, came in a variety of types and shapes, just as salads themselves do. 

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.B.

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 For many of them have stock in the concern or have mines and will be pleased to have old cutlery out of date.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 Christmas 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.” – Calexico Chronicle, 1930

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

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