GoneA said:
... And headband, can you explain why forks haven't evolved from spoons?
OK. Since you
did ask. I read this in a book once, so it must be true.
Forks were invented in the Middle East, where they evoloved from shish-kebab skewers. The Middle eastern gentry lazed around on pillows, so they couldn't sit at a table and slop their food over a bowl or plate. They needed something to pick pieces of meat and vegetable out of sauces or curries--spoons would be too sloppy. The fork moved to Italy in Roman times (because the romans lazed around on cushions, too) but the rest of Western Europe thought forks were an effeminate Italian affectation, used for spaghetti and other silly stuff. Northern and Western Europeans cut their meat, and then speared it with the pointy end of the knife.
When pointed knives began to be used as daggers in palace coups (around Elizabethan times, the 1600s) the European courts felt it was time to ban them, and the
round ended knife was decreed the new standard.
If your knife has no point, the relatively benign Italian fork proves useful. The fork would hold the meat in place with your left hand while you cut it with the knife in your right, and then you would raise the meat to your mouth with your left hand. The French court standardised this as the new gracious way to eat, and Britain and the rest of Europe followed suit.
Alas, nobody told the American colonists about this new form of table etiquette. They ordered their knives from the factories of Wiltshire unaware that you now needed forks to go along with them.
The American colonists had to make do: they held their meat in place with a spoon, using the left hand, and cut with a knife in their right. They transferred the spoon to their right hand and scooped up the pieces. When forks eventually started arriving (without instructions, of course) the colonists thought they were to be used as a spoon rather than a spear.
And that's why Europeans and Americans use cutlery differently.
(I should get a new Blogger question, shouldn't I? Thanks for reading the blog, by the way, GoneA)