Just realized

[moon_custafer]

that I have never seen anyone eat peas with a knife in real life, but I’ve read generations of books, cartoons, magazine articles, and humorous rhymes about how you shouldn't do it, but I've never seen anyone actually try to do it in real life.

I suppose there must have been some time period in which it was the norm, then it became backwards and outdated, then it died out completely? Like pouring tea from the cup into the saucer and then drinking from the latter, which I also never seen done in person (Bob Peck did it onstage in Nicholas Nickleby to demonstrate that his character was a salt-of-the-earth, old-fashioned Yorkshire farmer).

Comments

[kore]

I read the saucer-drinking described in Dickens and ther Victorian novels and then Pratchett, but it's hard to visualize!

[moon_custafer]

I have a vague memory of some of my older relatives mentioning that their father or grandfather did it, so it apparently survived into the early twentieth-century in some quarters. I think the first time I ever read about the practice was in a book of jokes and funny anecdotes published in the 1960s and owned by my grandfather, in which there was a “keep your fork Duke there’s pie”-type of story whose punchline involved a cowboy gallantly offering his tea to someone in a hurry, because “mine’s already been saucered and blowed.”

As you can imagine, the reference just confused me at the time.

[kore]

...."Saucered and Blowed" sounds like a new awesome tag on AO3 maybe, not gonna lie

I eat my peas with honey; I've done it all my life

[kore]

Also ohh I guess the forks were more stabby, with only a couple of prongs, and the knives, or butter knives, had a broader, rounded tip? it still seems very inefficient, tho.

https://gordonlepard.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/historical-reconstructions-cutlery-and-peas/

Re: I eat my peas with honey; I've done it all my life

[moon_custafer]

I came across related articles on the history of tableware that did explain the differences in American vs English and European fork usage as being due to table-knives with rounded tips coming later to the US. Don’t know enough about dining history to judge whether this is true.

Also confirmed that yes, asparagus was indeed considered a finger food in the past; sufficiently far back in the past that all the modern etiquette articles consist of wrestling with the question: “If it’s no longer commonly known you’re supposed to eat them with your fingers, is it ok to do so or are you just trolling the other diners?”

Re: I eat my peas with honey; I've done it all my life

[kore]

....asparagus is not a finger food? Are you not supposed to pick it up and drag its tender tips through the yummy possible sauces (mustard-honey-mayo with pepper, omg) and chomp on it? Uh.

(I mean, if it was cut up and roastd and mixed in with a dish, obviously I would use my Stabby Two Tined Fork)

Thta also reminds me of the bit in The Bell Jar where not!Sylvia is talking to a famous poet who is eating salad (presumably undressed) with his fingers while talking to her about poetry and she can't take her eyes off the stubby fingers, travelling to and fro his mouth, and nobody at the table says a word.

Re: I eat my peas with honey; I've done it all my life

[teenybuffalo]

Asparagus is a finger food, by me. As long as it's not served covered in dressing, you just pick it up by the cut end, flavor the tip, and eat down the stalk until you're done or it's too tough to bite easily, whereupon you wipe your fingers on a napkin. You could cut it into short sections and eat the sections with a fork, but there's no good reason to do that. It'd be like being served corn on the cob and laboriously cutting all the kernels off and eating them with a fork (which people also do, it's just not expected of them when corn is served).

[nineveh_uk]

It's a lot easier to eat your peas from the back of your knife than the place you're supposed to eat them from, which is the back of the fork... Or at least I assume that is part of the joke - I, being a modern pleb, scoop them in the fork, or I would were it not for the fact that I dislike peas so don't have to worry about it.

[kore]

My family and everyone else I know has always used a spoon. But apparently that is somehow Uncouth and spoons should be saved for ice cream and soup? What??

[ironed_orchid]

I have a vague memory of being told that while you should use the back of the fork to take food from the plate to your mouth, peas were an exception and it was permissible to use the fork like a shovel. I doubt it was my parents, because we didn't really eat at the table.