Veer's link works for me. I watched the video clip and laughed. Then I read your post, Friedag, and laughed some more. In case you still cannot see it, it is the very Newhart skit you remembered. I did not recognize the phrase beforehand like you did.

Old Walter seems to have had a finger in every pie. Poor Thomas Harriot.

Tobacco may seem out of the scope of a food thread, but there is a relationship between tobacco and food. Old menus for fancy dinners and restaurants often include cigars and cigarettes as the last thing - for gentlemen. Years after my mom quit smoking she said that she did not crave a cigarette except sometimes after a particularly good and satisfying meal.

Re: broad or fava beans. They have to be first shelled then boiled for a short time and then skinned like almonds. They are a local seasonal specialty in my adopted part of Sweden and the season is already over. They are always eaten fresh. I have never acquired the habit as I was not born here.

I have inherited a very elegant oval cup in white and blue china for serving cigarettes. I use it as bud vase or for other small flowers.

I first came across grated carrots in a sickly green jello in the canteen in Yosemite National Park in 1981. We didn't try it. The next time was at Thanksgiving at my Wisconsin cousin's house but that jello was yellow and looked more appetizing. I had some, ate it after the turkey and treated it secretly as a dessert.

Mariannese, years ago, when I traveled in Scandinavia, I was very impressed by the Smorgaasboord, and found everything to my liking. Is this still served frequently?

What's interesting now is that my food tastes are so totally out of sync with my family's. My current go-to salad is broccoli, grape tomatoes, crumbled feta in an Italian style dressing. No one but one sister will eat it. Instead I always get asked to bring a 7 layer salad which I hate. Bite sized pieces of iceberg lettuce, grated carrots, frozen peas, onions, eggs, bacon bits, mayonnaise, and grated cheddar on top for garnish.

Reminds me, Frieda, I hadn't yet answered your question about the wedges of iceberg lettuce. We never had that at home, but always out at catered dinners and I'm remebering blue cheese dressing - which I still don't like. Oddly enough I love gorgonzola but hate blue cheese.

Mariannesei, your experience with carrots in salad drove me to my "Dining with Pioneers" cookbook where I found an entire page of lime salad. You'll be glad to know it is usally mixed with pineapple, variations include grated american cheese, cottage cheese,

Sunshine salad is pineapple, orange jello, cream cheese, whipped evaporated milk, nuts, and celery. Out of this World salad is lemon jello, lime jello, finely chopped cucumbers, onion, mayo, vinegar, cottage cheese, and pecans.

Mariannese: skinned like almonds...Thanks for that tip for dealing with broad beans. I didn't even know you could skin beans (showing my ignorance).

Like Woodnymph, I want to know about the smorgasbord (I hate that this site will not accept diacritical marks). I have a cookbook entitled Swedish Food, printed in Gothenburg, Swedish/English edition, 1961, that has some of the most mouthwatering photos of a smorgasbord. I am struck by the aspics which all seem to be savory (e.g., Sillsallad, fisk i gele, Inkokt stromming i gele) unlike most American aspics/molds that we have been discussing that are usually sweet or semi-sweet.

To my Norwegian great-grandmother the koldtbord was a bowl full of hard-boiled eggs, peeled; lutfisk which only the bravest of souls would venture to taste; some nondescript bread (although she could make fine lefse when she wanted to); a plate of butter; various tins of sardines and such; and her own pickled gherkins. So you can see why the smorgasbord is so vivid and appealing to me in comparison!

Lydia, nope, I still can't make the link work, but thanks for letting me know I was on the right track. It's such a funny line that it's stuck with me after decades.

I sympathize with your mom on the longing for a cigarette after dinner. I began smoking at nineteen and quit when I was thirty-four (so I could have babies). It's been over twenty-eight years and I still get twinges. I have to admit that smoking was too damned pleasurable in the company of other smokers, like at sidewalk cafes in Paris. I know that most of Europe, like the US and elsewhere, have now banned smoking in eating establishments (rightly so), but in my fondest memories there's still a cloud of Gauloises or the aroma of Turkish.

Chris, is 'Out of the World' the salad recipe's name or your estimation of it? I don't mind a cucumber mousse or an 'Emerald Salad' as I've heard it called.

The layered salads have been run into the ground, in my opinion. Of course they're edible, but... I'd do the broccoli/grape tomatoes/feta salad with ya, Chris. :-)

Oh, Mariannese's elegant cigarette server reminded of a beautiful cut-glass receptacle I have been using for years as a flower vase. A knowledgeable person informed me that its original purpose was for celery when stalks of celery with their leaves still attached were placed in this 'vase' and set on the table where each diner could easily reach it (there might be two or more celery servers for especially long tables and lots of diners). A celery stalk could be munched as a palate cleanser between courses or as an after-dinner breath freshener.

What other (perhaps) unusual service items do you know or maybe even use? I inherited a set of egg cups that amuse my family and various friends for, unlike the English, many Americans have never used them -- or eat soft-cooked eggs very often, for that matter. I had several toast racks that have migrated from the table to be used as letter holders. My fanciest china dinner service has finger bowls which have been used as dessert dishes. I have about as much use for fancy china as I do for the lovely damask tablecloths that I inherited with it, but they belonged to a dear relative so I've kept all.

Friedag--We have soft boiled (or soft cooked, as you call them) eggs very often, and I even have egg cups & an egg topper (to cut off the tops of the eggs, of course). My husband likes them served that way, but I just empty the egg into a small bowl. And we're in the US.

My now single son asked for egg cups only today to supplement his meagre store of household goods, his ex-wife got everything. We cut the tops with a knife, considered a no-no in elegant circles here, to be well-bred you should tap (knock?) the eggshell lightly and remove the bits discreetly. I shall look for some nice egg cups for my boy soon, but not plastic ones in the shape of chickens.

Smorgasbord is now primarily served in restaurants before Christmas for the office party dinners. It requires 7 different plates because you don't mix the salt dishes, or the cold meat and the hot dishes, or the cheese, the nuts, the fruit and the desserts. I serve a smaller smorgasbord for my now large family, with 10-15 dishes and we use only three, or four plates at the most. Easter and Midsummer are other smorgasbord occasions but not so lavish as at Christmas.

I am burdened with 8 large white damask table cloths and dozens of damask napkins that I never use, all beautifully crafted. One is entirely home made from the flax to the woven material. My children don't want them either but I can't get rid of them as they are heirlooms, and besides, they are impossible to sell. Nobody wants white table cloths now. Somebody (in the 70ies of course) told me to dye them but I couldn't do that. Perhaps they will be back in fashion.

Other useless possessions are the fish knives, the sugar tongs (several) and a contraption for snuffing candles.

Frieda, "out of this World" is the name of the salad. I spent another hour just reading the cookbook. Anyone else do that?

In Australia, a boiled egg is always soft. Otherwise it is a hard-boiled egg. I have never heard of something to cut the top off, as we always used a knife. And like Vee, we often had 'soldiers' with it.
I have a remote cousin who makes the nicest curried eggs, which are hard boiled, the yolks removed and mixed with curry powder and a bit of mayonnaise and then piped back into the whites.
When I was young, salads were mostly very simple, but now we eat a lot more varieties. However, some of the recipes above sound rather unusual to me. My mother would serve tomato and onion together, sometimes with cucumber added, but the only dressing I remember from my youth was mayonnaise, which I was told I wouldn't like, so never tried! Mum always put sugar on my lettuce and on my tomato too, though.
My favourite salads now are Greek (tomato, cucumber, red onion, feta cheese, lemon juice dressing) and a nice brown rice salad with capsicum, shallots, cashew nuts, sultanas and a soy sauce, garlic and oil dressing.

I remember the finger bowls well, as a girl in the South. Mostly in my aunt's formal home in Richmond, VA. She used to change her clothes twice a day with formal dress for dinner.And always the pristine white gloves and hat with veil! Anyhow, the finger bowls were quite useful for cleaning up after eating corn on the cob or fried chicken pieces with our fingers.

I, too, inherited damask tablecloths and napkins, as well as fish forks, egg cups, candle snuffers,and a complete set of sterling silver in the Louis XIV pattern. Oh, and a sterling formal tea service, de rigeur in many old southern dining rooms on the hunt board.

Chris, I read cook books, too, sometimes for hours. I find them fascinating.

The first time I saw egg cups I did not know what they were. Soft boiled eggs make me shudder and I do not think anyone in my family likes them either. I would not have any use for egg cups. I have a double boiler/steamer that came with an insert for poaching four eggs. I have never used it because my family and I feel the same about poached eggs as we do about soft boiled ones.

I have a small pair of unusual (to me) scissors. They are for cutting stems and removing grape seeds. I was told that they could be used to skin the grapes. It must be an acquired skill through lots of practice. When I tried it, I only made a pulpy mess. Grapes sure were a lot of trouble to eat before the seedless varieties were developed.

At a garage sale I found a small silverplate box (about 2 inches square) with a latched flip top over a compartment and a tiny latched drawer beneath. On the side is a slot with a miniature spoon. I thought it was a fancy snuffbox, but the drawer puzzled me. My brother in law suggested it was for coke! - you know, the tiny spoon. I told him I was shocked! ;) I learned that the box is actually a personal salt cellar, the salt going in the top compartment and pepper going in the drawer. Evidently people carried salt cellars around with them not wanting to get caught somewhere without these favorite seasonings.

I bought the eggcups for my son today, a set of four in different colours. My son shares custody of his two children who stay one week with him, the other with their mother. He wants to train the children to eat eggs. I made sure one cup was pink, perhaps that may entice his daughter to try but I doubt it.

Soft boiled or poached eggs are so everyday here, along with eggcups, egg spoons and egg cosies (like a small tea cosie) and are eaten at breakfast or maybe 'tea' especially by children, that we don't think anything of it. Always considered to be good 'convalescent' food.
Just half an hour ago I was reading Adventures in Two Worlds by A J Cronin, about his early life as a Dr in Scotland and his description of 'High Tea' . . . cake, buns, toast, preserves, brown bread, home-baked scones, cheese, bannocks and a huge plate of cold ham and poached eggs; all washed down with strong tea.
This reminded me that my Father always insisted on slices of proper ham (not the plastic round/square sort) served with poached eggs for breakfast.
A J Cronin's 'tea' eaten at about 5-6 o'clock came after a cooked mid-day lunch, and before a bed-time supper, not to mention a full breakfast to set him up for the day.

Mariannese, damask is worth an enormous amount of money and specialist shops over here will pay several pounds a foot/metre for it. I have one good damask table cloth 'inherited' with our house. When we moved in we found a parcel from the laundry left by the family of the old boy who had been the home-owner and had died several years before! There were napkins, table clothes, white shirts etc all full of starch (does anyone use starch these days?)

We don't have any grape scissors but have old nut crackers with 'Hudson Bay Co.' on them, also a thick HBC blanket. My US Grandfather's Philippine company had a ship previously owned by the HBC; so very far from home.

Astrokath, those curried eggs sounds like a variation on our deviled eggs- yoke mixed with mayo, mustard, and whatever else you have a mind to add. Do you have those?

Deviled egg plates are supposed to be de rigueur for Southern women, but the nice ones only hold 10 or 12 deviled eggs and I have never in my life brought so few to a gathering.

When I was but a little girl my aunt told me an awful joke with mayonnaise and a frog in a blender. I don't think I knowingly ate mayonnaise till I was 30.

I was going to stay away from this thread and I am holding it responsible for any weight gain (and not the apple cake with ice cream and butterscotch sauce I made for dh's birthday over the weekend.)

My grandfather ate a soft-boiled egg every morning for breakfast so in my family they are known as "Papap" eggs. Still eaten regularly at my house, we have Polish pottery egg cups.. but before I bought those, we used shot glasses. Crack the egg with a spoon, remove top shell and scoop out the egg.

Oooh, Kath, that brown rice salad does sound nice! Which capsicum is used? I like unexpected taste combinations, such as the inclusion of sultanas. There's a broccoli salad of which I'm quite fond (Americans will probably recognize it) that has raw broccoli florets, chopped red onion, crumbled bacon, toasted sunflower seeds, and raisins. I'm not sure about the dressing, but I think it's an enhanced mayonnaise. Unfortunately for me, my immediate family members do not like 'dead grapes' so I only get to eat this salad at other people's get-togethers.

Lydia, sounds like you have a little treasure with that salt cellar, especially because yours still has the little spoon.

I am an egghead, in more ways than one, but in this sense I am crazy for eggs (from fowl, not fish or reptiles). I like most any way they can be prepared. The French, of course, work magic with eggs, but the English are good too. Occasionally, I hanker for a fried egg sandwich in the English style, just a fried egg (the yolk still runny) between two slices of toast. Very messy but that's just part of the pleasure, in my opinion. I think Americans tend to overcook eggs because they actually prefer them that way -- fried eggs with solid yolks, scrambled eggs either dry and crumbly or rubbery, and omelettes with the consistency of plastic placemats.

My DH says this about me: Frieda has never met a vegetable or an egg she didn't like. I am uncertain whether he's complimenting me... Actually it's not quite true that I like all, but close enough. One thing I don't like is wasabi which I think is the most vile something that is supposed to be edible. It reams out my sinuses in the same way that Chinese mustard does. I can enjoy a bit of Chinese mustard but not wasabi.

Some people don't like garlic or onions or hot peppers (capsicum) in much the same way I don't like wasabi. Do any of you have similar reactions to 'loud' foods? Which ones?

I wonder if the overcooked eggs are a precaution because of fear of salmonella? It doesn't exist in Sweden and Norway but the Danes have it. A young Swedish cook poisoned 500 guests with his mayonnaise in a Copenhagen restaurant a couple of years ago as he was ignorant of the risk.

I like a little wasabi with sushi, very little mixed with the soy sauce dip. I don't think it tastes very different from horseradish that way.

I love fish eggs and can still remember a flight from Moscow to Stockholm where they served lots of caviare as the first course. I was sitting next to a young girl who gave me hers because she couldn't eat it. Never again will I be able to stuff myself with Russian caviare so much that I couldn't eat the chicken that came after it. We have a few local varieties of roe, much cheaper and quite tasty, but nothing like real caviare.

Frieda, here is the recipe for you. As you know, I like to include the name of the person who gave me the recipe in the title. Pure serendipity, this came from Meredith Brown *g*

Brown Rice Salad
2 cups cooked brown rice
6 shallots, chopped
1 red capsicum, diced
50g cashew nuts, chopped
3 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1/3 cup sultanas

Dressing
1/4 cup sunflower oil (I use a bit less)
4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2-3 teaspns crushed garlic

Mix together and pour over the rest. Note that Aussie tablespoons are 20ml, yours are only 15ml.
The capsicum is not hot at all. The one thing I can't eat is chilli. An amount that seems unnoticeable to others makes my mouth burn in a truly horrible way. People often say to me 'oh, you don't like spicy food' but that's not true. I love curries as long as there isn't any chilli in it. Spicy shouldn't be a synonym for hot. Wasabi isn't for me *VBG*

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:2117415}}

When traveling in Russia years ago, I sampled the "real" caviar, which was delicious. I have an old recipe that calls for caviar over pasta.

I love all mildly curried dishes with cumin, so long as they are not too hot and spicey. Mild is the key word for me. I stay away from chili peppers.

Vee, how would you describe the ham you are used to eating in the UK? Would you say it is similar to Danish ham?

I was force-fed scrambled eggs for breakfast as a child, and it took decades before I could even look at an egg. Now, I adore omelets and hard-boiled eggs.

My Ukrainian grandmother, Baba, always had a big sheet apple pie on her stove whenever anyone dropped by.
I think she made one almost every other day from her own apple tree.
The crust was something she created 'by feel'....no worrying about flakiness .
She'd roll out the dough into a jelly roll pan....fill it to overflowing with the best apples.....and top it with more crust.
No plates or forks were needed, you just cut out a square and ate it, like a square of pizza !

She'd always insist on sending a big square of it home with you too.
It was a staple in her kitchen.

Today I continue to bake sheet apple pies to the delight of family and friends.
Of course the apple filling is the key....it has to be closer to natural tasting, rather than over-sugared.
If I can get Northern Spy apples it is the best of all.

I loved going to Baba's house.
The greeting was always the same: "Eat ! Eat !"

Yoyobon, I had a Baba too. Your sheet apple pie sounds wonderful.

I agree, the sheet apple pie sounds great. My Kentuckian grandma made apple stack cakes - thin layers of cake alternating with applesauce.

As to strong tastes, a garlic switch flipped over in me when I was in my late 30s. I remember returning a beautiful steak out in Dillon, Colorado because it was slathered in garlic and the menu had said nothing and I couldn't eat it. Just a few years later, I walked into a reception room and the smell of garlic shrimp was divine! And I don't like shrimp.

The Ukrainian sheet apple pie goes on my list of foods to try!

Friedag, I think onions are essential for good cooking, but raw white and some yellow onions are very painful for me to handle. I cannot chop them without tearing up to the point that I cannot see what I am doing, and my nose runs. My husband though can chop the other halves of the same onions without being affected a bit. It is unfair! However, I can de-seed and slice jalapenos without wearing gloves when my husband cannot.

I love to mince garlic because of the aroma. I even like how the smell lingers on my hands.

My grandmother, Baba, used to grow her own garlic and always had a bowl of raw garlic on her kitchen table which she would eat like radishes !!

On Christmas Eve all the men would gather in the kitchen while my grandfather, Gigi, would brew vodka , honey and butter.
He'd pour it hot into tiny shot glasses and they'd drink it.
Nazdrovia !!!

Chris, the mother of my best friend from high school made apple stack cake, but she made it with apples that she dried herself, not those dehydrated ones you see in the grocery stores. She put lots of spices in the cooked filling so that it was the color of apple butter, and her cake layers were not much thicker than pancakes and stacked six or eight high. It was absolutely delicious, and I never knew anyone else who made them.

My friend tried drying her own apples by a method someone told her about--putting them on kitchen towels on the shelf above the back seat in her car and leaving them. The heat of the sun on the car window did dry them, but they drew wasps into her car. She didn't try that again!

Na zdrowie, Yoyo! and hey--my Baba was married to a Dzedo--we said Jetho or Jethi, pretty close to your GiGi; not Ukrainian but Lemko. Again, pretty close. We always spent Russian Easter with them and I felt like I hit the Easter basket jackpot with the two separate Easter celebrations going on. One of my Lemko aunts married an Italian man. As a result, she added cannoli to the dessert table. I went to college and got into an argument, telling someone that "everyone knows cannoli is a Russian dessert."

Kath, your brown rice salad is very similar to the Middle Eastern tabouli salad, where bulgar wheat is used instead of rice.

Mary Danish ham/bacon production is big business and is sold widely in the UK. Luckily we can get locally reared stuff and like to support our small-scale farmers where possible, even though it costs more. Meat from the 'rare breed' Gloucester Old Spot pig is becoming very popular, some super sausages come from them!

May I ask an eating related question?
Why do Americans eat using primarily a fork, rather than a knife and fork? It has always puzzled me.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rare Breed Pig

Veer.....that is interesting, isn't it !

We use our knife to cut with our right hand and then switch the fork back to the right to eat.

Lots of back and forth going on....unless you opt to try to use the side of the fork to cut through less dense foods.

Because of how we are taught to use our utensils, it feels slightly less 'proper' to have that knife off the table unless it being used for cutting.

When I was teaching Home Ec. it always surprised me how many kids had no idea how to set a table and where to put the various pieces of silverware. When there were more than the standard three pieces they were really in a bind !
I enjoyed sharing this knowledge with them and always hoped that somehow I'd helped to civilize them !! lol.

Perhaps it not the most important skill in the world but it seems to me that so many of the small civilities are lost that it might be worth trying to salvage a few.

Grand, Kath! Can't wait to try Meredith Brown's recipe.:-)
I'd say it's a cold/room temperature? pilaf.

The capsicum shown in your link (hooray, I could see it!) is what we call 'bell pepper' or sometimes 'sweet pepper'. I like all bell peppers, especially the red, yellow, and orange ones -- those being more mellow than the green, although the green are certainly not hot. Chopped green bell pepper, chopped onion, and sliced (or chopped) celery form "The Holy Trinity" of Cajun/Creole cooking. Add chopped tomatoes, let stew for a while, and you have Sauce Creole which should be flavorful but not tastebud numbing. I agree that 'hot' and 'spicy' are NOT synonyms, contrary to the way lots of people use 'em. Something can be hot AND spicy, of course, but just spicy could mean seasoned with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg as many cakes and cookies are. I started to include ginger, but ginger root can be hot as well as spicy.

As for curries: I adore the hot ones! But then I'm a chile head (as well as an egghead).

Lydia, you should designate your DH as Chief of onion chopping and slicing. I have come across screaming onions that have made me weep, but not as badly as what you experience. The physiology of taste and smell (and other manifestations and reactions to food) is endlessly fascinating to me. I volunteered to have my tongue 'mapped' for a university study. I found out that I have a higher-than-average number of bitter receptors (tastebuds). It's probably the reason I am sensitive to some olives (kalamata are especially acrid) and I don't like beer, wine, hard liquor, coffee, tea, and unsweetened chocolate, all of which have a bitter component. Of course it's the bitterness that many, many people love.

Re the knife & fork thing: Vee, as Yvonne says, it's just the way Americans were taught to eat, if we are using our best manners. We eat too damn quickly most of the time, so anything that will slow us down -- such as putting our knives across our plates when we are not actively using them to cut and switching hands for our forks -- is a good thing! :-)

I've always thought the British way of hanging on to both knife and fork is more efficient than the American way, especially when using the fork to load up the blade of the knife. The first time I saw it, I thought it must've been peculiar to that person but I quickly learned that it was a rather widespread habit in the UK, but mostly in comfortable situations -- at home, among friends, etc. Friends tell me that they were admonished at school for eating from their knife blades. Are students still? Or do the educators not worry about such things these days?

Having an English grandmother, I learned to use my utensils in both the American & British ways, but tend to the British, Just so much more efficient. But NEVER loading the knife & eating off it--gross!

But either way, I've noticed (even in some very up-market restaurants) the proper use of eating utensils is a disappearing skill.

leel. I will certainly agree that putting a knife into ones mouth, besides being dangerous, is considered disgusting manners. I really can't think when I last saw anyone do it. Frieda it really isn't a wide-spread habit over here, at least not in the parts of the country familiar to me ;-(. There used to be a sort of joke that so-and-so (it would be someone about who the speaker was being disparaging) would eat 'off their knife'.
Do you remember in Great Expectations where Herbert Pocket has been given the job of turning Pip into a gentleman? They are eating at a club and HP says something along the lines of " I say old man, I feel I should point out that it is longer the fashion to eat peas off your knife."
I think 'table manners' in general are becoming a thing of the past. Not only (in the UK) do many people graze rather than eat together around a table, set with knives forks spoons etc., but they loll in front of the TV eating out of the cardboard/foil container that the 'ready meal' arrived in and swig drink out of cans.
Apparently many young children had to be taught how to use a knife and fork when they started school, but now hot mid-day meals are becoming a thing of the past and only sandwiches are brought from home, they will probably never learn these basic skills.

I'm still intrigued to know why or how US fork-only eating came about, especially if you consider that the fork is something of a 'new-comer' to the eating scene.

Regardng onions: I have dry, sensitive eyes and cannot tolerate chopping the average onion. However, I've found I can deal with the mild Vidalia onions, whose origin is in Georgia.

I never heard of anyone eating off a knife. However, I do not change hands: I hold my knife in my left hand while I am cutting, and my right hand always holds the fork.

This reminds me of a poem which I liked to quote for my grandkids when they were trying to learn how to use knives and forks........

" I eat my peas with peanut butter,
I've done it all my life.
It doesn't make the peas taste better,
but it keeps them on my knife ! "

I'd say that eating with both knife and fork at the same time is the common way all over Europe. I have never seen it done in any other way except by lefthanded persons. Putting one's knife in the mouth is unforgivable. One piles the food on the backside of the fork. My hometown of Ume� and the even more northerly city of Lule� are the only places in the world where McDonald's supplies knives and forks because customers demand it. In the rest of Sweden people have learnt to eat with their hands in fast food restaurants.

Woodnymph,
Here's a technique that Marcella Hazen (the guru of Italian cuisine ) suggests when serving onions raw:

Peel and slice the onion and place the slices in a bowl of cold water....then gently squeeze them a few times, change the water and squeeze again, change the water and let them sit in the water for about 15 minutes.
Drain and add to your salad or dish requiring raw onions.
The offending element ( I can't recall at the moment what it is) is dissolved and washed out of them thus making them gentle and rather pleasant.

Try it.

Vee, out of curiosity (because of your query), I've been reading up on the history of the fork. Apparently the two-prong fork appeared in England in the 16th century, probably from an Italian source, but it wasn't until King Charles I deemed in 1633, "It is decent to use a fork," that the use of forks began to spread in England. At about the same time, forks appeared in North America (Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts left a household inventory that included forks).

Far from being considered uncouth, eating from the blade of a knife was acceptable, as was eating with one's fingers. King Louis XIV of France continued to do both. It was the eating with a fork that was considered 'devilish'.

In neither England nor North America was there yet a settled way to use forks. The two-pronged fork wasn't conducive to scooping food, so three-, four-, and even five-pronged models were made to go along with the innovation of making them slightly curved. North Americans were slow at acquiring the multi-prong forks, as were poorer people in the British Isles. As late as the 19th century, etiquette books instructed how to use forks, but by this time the British and American ways were already different. Why? Historians don't seem to know for sure. It's probably just a case of parallel development where small changes accrued and became different acceptable forms.

I have wondered whether the American disinclination to have both hands in use (except when cutting) has anything to do with the taboo of using the left hand in some cultures (in Middle Eastern ones, for instance). I don't know why it should, but it's an interesting feature shared by those cultures and some Americans who are taught to kept one hand in the lap, not having two above the edge of the table (except in aforementioned special circumstances), and to NEVER put your elbows on the table. Being left handed, I have had to wedge my left hand in the crook of my left knee to prevent myself from using it impolitely. Like Mary, I cut with my left hand and keep my fork in the right most of the time. The customary positioning of flatware is always bass-ackwards to me and other lefties.

Interesting......
A friend shared that when she was a student spending a semester in France she was instructed by her host family to always keep both wrists on the edge of the table as the french did with a utensil in each hand. They said that eating the "American way" with her left hand in her lap was not 'correct'.

So...when in Rome etc, etc.

Terry Pratchett, in A Monstrous Regiment makes a strong case for always having an onion for cooking. Oddly enough, I've been more likely to have onions on hand since reading that. Sometimes onions do make me weep so much I cannot see.

Friedag, am I drawing the right conclusion that people who like foods and beverages with underlying bitterness probably do not have as many bitter receptors as people who find the bitterness unpleasant? Does that mean people who want things supersweet do not have as many sweet receptors as people who are satisfied with less sweetness?

The physiology is fascinating to me too! It can explain a lot about personal likes and dislikes.

I was taught the "American Way" of using a knife and fork in home economics class. I am American but my family's style was not the same. Many foods in the hispanic repertoire do not require a knife so one is not always included in a place setting. It is not improper in my culture to use a rolled up tortilla instead of a knife to push food on to your fork. I think it is good to know the ways of other cultures and follow their example when visiting. It is fun.

Lydia, I have only the most basic understanding of the physiology of taste; but from what I have been told by physiologists who specialize in that area, it has more to do with chemistry than the actual number of taste buds or what a particular taste bud detects. The 'mapping' that I described was done in the 1970s so the thinking has changed among researchers since. The reason the study was designed was to either prove or disprove earlier studies by scientists who in the first half of the 20th century had created 'tongue maps' to indicate where the four sensations of taste (sweet, sour, salty, bitter) resided on the tongue. (A fifth sensation, umami, sometimes described as 'meatiness', has since been added.)

The current thinking (from what I understand) is that all taste buds are capable of detecting all the sensations; but according to the interaction between food chemistry and a person's chemistry, some sensations will vary in intensity from person to person, even from time to time in the same person (illness can cause changes in the sense of taste which everyone who suffers a head cold already knows). Those more knowledgeable about chemistry can explain it better, I'm sure.

What the physiologists told me about my own sensitivity: For whatever chemical reason, my taste buds do a bang-up job of detecting bitterness. It's both a good and bad thing for me -- 1) the bad: it makes me a hell of a hard-to-please attendee of social events since I don't like most of the beverages that most socializers imbibe; 2) the good: I'm likely to spit something poisonous out before it can harm me, and I'll never be an alcoholic.

The only style of eating that REALLY bothers me is putting the elbows or forearms on the table.

It reminds me of some thug hunkering down at a diner counter for his grub.

"Elbows off the table, Mable !!"

Thank you, Friedag, for the explanation. You piqued my interest and now I can delve more into it. I remember studying a tongue map in home ec. Home ec again! From an elective which we thought would be just a breeze, we sure learned a lot of useful stuff.

I never heard before of umami, the "meaty" sense. I think I am sensitive to sweetness and saltiness, but not bitterness so much. I do notice when cucumbers are bitter, but I like all those stimulant beverages you mentioned, Friedag. I like faint sourness, though not the kind of sourness that makes my neck glands ache. The combination tastes - bittersweet, sweet/sour, salty/sweet - are interesting, but those that do not combine with sweetness do not seem to be very popular.

Something that would get my siblings and me removed from the table was gesturing with our eating utensils when we talked. This irritated our father more than when we accidentally spoke with our mouths full.

Humans are genetically predisposed to favor sweet foods. Human breast milk is very sweet.

It's really quite remarkable that people have developed a liking for bitter foods and how they've learned techniques to deal with bitterness. The olive is a good example: the fruit has to be 'processed' to make it edible, yet the process was invented so long ago that we don't think of it as 'unnatural' as people often do with more recent innovations.

Deliberately eating 'rotten' food, and preferring it, is another food development that boggles my mind. All aged and fermented foods and drinks fall in this category. Of course rotting is natural, so it must have been from necessity that people adapted their tastes to it. Europeans at first turned up their noses at the rotten fish sauces from Asia, conveniently forgetting their own inheritance from the Romans of garum.

Ethnocentricities abound: Naturally the French think the French way is the 'right' one. Visiting members of a French delegation to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette were shocked and appalled that the favored drink among Cajuns is beer, not wine. How could the Louisianians have strayed so far off the 'righteous' path?

Table manners are always a minefield. A friend told me that her father nixed a boyfriend of hers because said BF's manners were atrocious. BF's sin: when he cut his meat, his knife rasped and screeched against the plate. As painful as that must have been for papa to endure, I figure he was just looking for an excuse to put BF down.

Frieda, many thanks for your answer(s) to the knife and fork question. I don't think anyone over here is taught table manners at school (although many young people could do with them), however I think they are still dealt with at Officer Training courses for the military. In the past all officers were 'gentlemen' and knew which way to pass the port and which knife and fork to use for the many courses at Mess dinners. Old fashioned as these things might now appear in a modern army/navy these niceties are still observed.

Below is a website run by a Junior school (children up to 11 years) in Kent. An amazing amount of information about All Things British.

Here is a link that might be useful: Social Etiquette in the UK

One thing about the British/continental method seems tricky and counterintuitive to me. The instructions at the website, Veer, say that when holding the knife in one hand and the fork in the other, the tines of the fork should always face down towards the plate. Food should be placed on what I think of as the backside or underside of the fork - in other words, on the OUTSIDE curve rather than on the inside curve of the tines. I would think food would be more prone to falling off the fork if balanced on the arc instead of resting inside it. I have not tried it, but I am trying to imagine what advantage there would be to doing it that way.

However, dipping the soup spoon first towards the far rim of the bowl instead of the near rim, before bringing to the mouth, makes complete sense to me. A lot fewer dribbles on the tablecloth and on the bosom would happen.

Lydia, if there's any advantage to loading the food onto the 'backside' of the fork, I would like to know it too. I don't get the logic, and I've tried it. To my mind it defeats the purpose of designing the fork with multiple curved prongs -- it's made so it may be used for scooping but then the arbiters of etiquette decide it should not be. Pffft!

Vee, can you explain it to us? :-)

I've been away for a few days without internet access - there is so much to catch up on!

Vee, we eat tabouli regularly, but it isn't much like the rice salad above. I make tabouli with cracked wheat, lots of parsley, tomatoes and some mint, and just lemon juice for dressing. It has much more parsley than the rice one.

Yoyobon, I know that poem too, but mine is

I eat my peas with honey,
I've done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on the knife'

*VBG*

I tried eating off the back of my fork today at dinner. I was partially successful, but I think it must take practice. My family thought I was acting very strange.

It could be the meal we had - roast chicken, yellow squash dressing, gravy, green peas with diced carrots, and cranberry sauce - was not the best choice for me to experiment with. I followed the advice of Veer's linked website and mashed the peas and carrots against the back of my fork. It looked gross but worked. However, I got tired and went back to "scooping" because I prefer whole peas and discrete carrot bits. The cranberry sauce (it is really jelly, not sauce) immediately slid off the backside so I had to retrieve it with the tines pointing up. Friedag, I do not understand the antipathy toward scooping either.

I can't really answer your fork queries. When they were first produced they had straight prongs and were just used for stabbing/spearing food and I suppose that sloppy food was eaten with a spoon. Maybe as etiquette and genteel manners became the order of the day, even in more modest homes, using a fork as a shovel became seen as the mark of someone uncouth; certainly using it the way we do in UK/Europe slows-up the whole process of eating. Perhaps it came about as an indirect way of showing the the leisured classes had more time to spend on a meal.
Of course over here it is quite OK to use a fork in the right hand (we never put a knife in the left hand) when eating rice, pasta and similar slippy items.
Lydia, the 'advice' from that website, to mash/squash up the food on the back of the fork isn't really considered polite, you are meant to just stab a few-at-a-time peas/beans/bits of meat/whatever.

Frieda, you mention the 'boy-friend' and his knife scraping, it reminds me of friends who went off the daughter's b-friend because, when he was invited for supper/dinner he failed to put his dirty plate, cutlery, glass etc into the sink after he had finished eating. The way I had been brought up, as a guest in someone's house, we would sit round the table until everyone had finished and maybe offer to help clear away, depending on circumstances . . . it's never easy when in a different place. Even in parts of the UK eating habits/customs are quite varied and that dreadful English word class rears its ugly head. ;-(