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So it was a sham? I always wondered why, for example, you'd need a different fork and knife for fish when the regular ones are perfectly adequate at moving said
by charles_f 5y ago
So it was a sham? I always wondered why, for example, you'd need a different fork and knife for fish when the regular ones are perfectly adequate at moving said fish from the plate to your mouth, and if anything the fish knife is a lesser parody of a knife
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bserge 5y agoSocial customs/manners/etiquette are almost always a sham.
- lwhi 5y agoA fish knife is used to remove the spiney bones from the fish .. getting the fish in your mouth is the fork's job.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoThe two forks is strictly a class-signaling booby trap to identify who isn’t accustomed to fine dining.
- WastingMyTime89 5y agoThen again, the rule is to go from the outside to the inside as the meal progress. It's not very effective at signaling when it's so simple.
- spoonjim 5y agoYou likely learned that rule (and others may be learning it here from you) in a manner that either 1) required access to the upper class, serving its class-signaling powers, or 2) required information access like the Internet, or etiquette books, etc. that were not readily available to the class outsiders of Herbert Hoover's time.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoI don't know. I just learned it in school in a not-very-useful home economics class in a public school. This was around 1990 (give or take a year, as I'm not sure what grade I was in at the time). I've never needed the information. It is probably very easy to stumble upon the information now just by consuming popular culture stuff. This sort of information was probably everywhere in Hoover's time. Women's magazines would have featured such things for the middle class to consume, and some of the poor folks had to know because they worked in upper-class homes and restaurants.
- bumblebritches5 5y agobro, i learned that from Titanic...
- user5994461 5y agoThat doesn't help you when you're the one dressing the tables. Which forks do you put? in what order? That doesn't help you with planning the meal. When do you bring the 7 courses and in what order? Was it 7 courses or something else for that ocassion, can't remember. And yes I am that guy who had to host fine dining.
- Bayart 5y agoThe fish knife makes it much easier to separate the flesh from the bones cleanly. But the fork is only there for etiquette indeed.
- lisper 5y agoThe weird shape of a fish knife actually has a purpose: it is used for filleting a whole fish. But nowadays it is often presented for use with a fish that has already been filleted and for that it is rather silly.
- harryseldon 5y agoThe reason that you're not supposed to use your regular knife to touch fish (or cut potatoes) is that a non stainless steel knife would tarnish. A fish knife is silver plated and therefore safe to use. While my grandparents still had knives that weren't stainless steel, mine would be all safe and the rules now seem arbitrary.
- dredmorbius 5y agoAside from class-signalling, it's also a benefit to the cutlery manufactuers. Both in expanding the size of a given set, and, by tweaking standards and fashions, by selling additional sets. It's otherwise difficult to build planned obsolescence into utensils.