After watching three of your videos, one after the other, my 12 year old son said "I like this guy. He makes history interesting. I thought history was just 'some guy was born in some year,, blah blah blah. I didn't know history could be fun. " Thanks, History Guy, for helping me turn around my kid's viewpoint.
I always like to start with "Did you know...", Helps build up curiosity, especially with kids. I love history, and even got some people at work, some who have never even finished highschool, learning about the industrial revolution, and whether it was a bad or good thing.
As a preschooler, and on (until he could go out and about on his own, we’d take our son to the various museums on the University campuses where we lived. When given his choice as to a family outing, that venue was usually selected even over the movies or skating!
I am born and raised in the USA and had never really realized the different styles of using utensils until I was on vacation with several European people. They asked me if I has always lived in the USA because I use the European style. It made me realize that my Great grandmother was from Wales. She taught her daughter, who taught her children, etc. ... Neat to think about.
“...what the fork to use...”, clever!😄. Add me to the list of people that have never switched hands, being left-handed (and therefore sinister). Love this channel!
As a chef I am super excited to hear this kind of history. please keep this kind of information coming I love the format and you do it in a very fun and enticing way. Learning is progress, and great food is the ultimate goal.
Re: left-handedness, I like to put it this way: "Most of the world may be right-handed, the rest of us are correct handed. Why do you think the forks are always on the left when fine dining?"
I watched this episode, as I ate my supper with a fork & knife. I'm from Canada, and I use my fork "Continental" style. Thank you THG, I am always awed by the segments you determine, "are worth remembering". Much appreciated!
My wife from Brazil eats in the continental style. Up to now I've jokingly referred to this as "the metric system of eating." I proudly eat in the American style. Our kids are caught in between. Now we know the differences in style & the reasons how they developed. Thanks History Guy!
They have a sleep over, there's no need as that's the handle on the outside door which was connected to the elbow outside and the seagul and helicopter got blown up by the tosser! 😭😂
The imperial unit of measure was used? When they killed the ancient aborigines and send rabbits and criminals there and the flu to kill them off and they destroyed their god and hid them before the downunder situation was formed Regards Black Plague
When I was learning how to set a table, I was always told that you place the cutting blade toward the plate. This was explained as in medieval times, you wanted to keep knife fights at a minimum.
I never would have guessed in a million years there was once a point in time when people freaked out over the use of a fork for eating. Thanks History Guy for so much interesting content on your channel.
Two things...I'm 66 and I was taught as a child that the continental method was rude or down scale. I switched to the easier method as soon as I learned it. Second, I've lived in the Arab world most of my life. My children are Arab. Arabs do use forks, but not with rice. Using a fork with rice marks you as a foreigner. Otherwise Arabs use forks for everything else.
This reminded me of the time we were visiting my in-laws when my daughter was very young. The flatware included three tined forks and when someone dropped a fork and when they announced "I dropped my fork", my daughter piped up with "You mean you dropped your threek." Whenever I see a three tined fork, I now call it a threek.
I was once given this bit of etymology by a person who was an iron smith a a renaissance fair: Single pointed objects are called pikes or, at sometime in the past, peaks (spelling?). Then two pointed objects, twoks (tooks, twoques?) (I don't know the spelling.) (Also note that this in Germanic/Anglo-Saxon languages.) So three pointed objects were indeed called threeks (thrikes, thriques?). So finally four pointed objects were called fourks (forks). I don't know how accurate this is, but maybe this is something the History Guy could look into. I think the terminolgy is just as interesting as the actual obect or event.
@@michaelcollier9368: You convinced me. Whether true or not, Pikes, Twoks, Threeks and Fourks are now part of my language. I actually have a Twok as part of my medieval re-enactment dinning kit.
"The abbot made us taste (reserved for his table) the chicken I had seen being prepared in the kitchen. I saw that he also possessed a metal fork, a great rarity, whose form reminded me of my master’s glasses. A man of noble extraction, our host did not want to soil his hands with food, and indeed offered us his implement, at least to take the meat from the large plate and put it in our bowls. I refused, but I saw that William accepted gladly and made nonchalant use of that instrument of great gentlemen, perhaps to show the abbot that not all Franciscans were men of scant education or humble birth. " From "The Name of the Rose", by Umberto Eco.
I love videos like this! The history of the things you take for granted like eating utensils! Such fun & you do learn something new everyday! I mean have you ever looked at a fork & wondered about the history of it??
I like the lava lamp in the background. As a left handed person raised as right (no pressure just no lefties to follow) I always used my left hand to cut and my fork with my right. This drove my dad nuts, he had military training too.
Hi History Guy. The Lancashire Cotton famine would be an interesting subject to cover. Lancashire Cotton mills, one of Britain's biggest industries, suffered lack of raw material due to the US Civil War. Despite the great suffering of workers, many of them refused to work with slave cotton on moral and religious grounds. They even sent a letter to Lincoln, who sent a letter in reply. There is a statue to Lincoln in Manchester still, with an inscription of his letter.
When an enlisted sailor in the Australian Navy changes over to an officer. We only drink water and eat nothing, to pass the table manners part of officer training.
In the US military, when one receives a direct commission (eg, newly recruited medical officer), one goes through a shortened course of basic military training mainly in military etiquette. We call it "fork and knife school."
@@davidwise1302 Yes, I remember setting my fork on the plate between each bite until the bite was consumed. Nothing my mother had not already taught me. They did not like the fact that my English uncle had taught me the proper use of knife and fork.
If you've ever been to a Dolly Parton Stampede show, namely the one in Pigeon Forge, TN, you'll know that everything palatable is consumed with your hands, and no flatware is used at all. I think this is brilliant; less waste, no cutlery to clean or dispose of, and fewer things for the waitstaff to buss after the meal. Simplified and happy, all around. I went to one of these shows about eight years or so ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt a bit neanderthal, or even medieval (as if at a madrigal play) but appreciated the simplicity of the presentation and the content of the meal all the more; small chickens cooked nicely, veggies well done but not overly so, bowls of soup easily drunk, and friendly folks in attendance to help you and let you enjoy the entertainment. If you've heard of a RU-vid channel called Townsends, it's a realtime chronicle of Revolution-era way of life re-enactment that is well researched and as realistic as can be done. You would enjoy it given the timeframe, HG. Jon is a good man and does his homework. I have a couple of "feasting sets" that I plan to give to close friends who are reenactors at the Feast of the Hunter's Moon. They're wrought iron, and are complete with a knife, two-pronged fork, and spoon, as well as a holster for all the utensils. I wonder what they will think of these when given. They may be period accurate, but it may be difficult to know for sure; it depends. Thank you for what you do. Keep it up.
I love your program. With each episode you remind us that history should be remembered (so as not to be repeated?) and that history is not the big event, great people scenario we were all taught in school, but little things done by ordinary people during the great events that advance the course of history. I do wish you would do some videos about Chinese history. In many ways they were ahead of the west and sadly that is passing out of the contemporary consciousness by western centricism.
Looking up what the heck an "ice cream fork" is, I couldn't help but compare it to something a lot of us have already seen called a "spork". I'd love a follow up of the evolution of the spork, and what makes it different than an ice cream fork! :)
07:42 my parents taught me all the commissioned officers' "knife and fork" school uses of utensils, plates bowls and their proper placement etc at the dinner placing, and sequential use. as a little kid, i thought this preposterous until as an adult, i was invited during an awards ceremony to dine in the "O" mess. right at home (some were stunned that an enlistedman knew the routine), and yes i tilted the soup bowl away from me, fully proper. the skipper thought it was a hoot.
@Mike Spencer I am so sorry for your handicap. I hope you can overcome it and join in living in less refined society. Though I am not African, I have to chuckle at their description of utensil positions for British guests. The fork is in the off position. You will of course, have a good day, sir.
I always enjoy your presentations. I am surprised by your omission of the derivation of the phrase "spick and span". As related by Henry Petrosky in his book, "The Evolution of Useful Things" , spic and span refers to a spike and span or a knife (spike) and span (fork, or more accurately the space between the tines of a fork). Th ability of these two instruments to keep one's hands clean and tidy morphed into the phrase "spic and span".
This was a great one. I remember hearing my mother, who is very judge mental, talking about somebody rudely eating their meat with their left hand and the tines pointed down. That is so funny.
My question is why does almost all histories of the fork gloss over the archaeological evidence of the use of the fork by the Romans? Roman forks have been been found as far north as Hadrian's Wall and in many excavations in London and other Roman forts in around Europe. It is true they fell out of fashion with the fall of the Western Empire, but their use continued in Italy and else where. The Moors in Spain (Medieval Andalusia) documented their eating manners.
Only this guy could make me interested in the history of something trivial like a fork. He could do a 24 hour documentary on grass and I would be so psyched lol
Hello Mr. History Guy, would you ever consider doing a presentation on the history of man kinds harvesting and farming of the Honey Bee. Thank you for your well research stories.
There is a message here for those who scream tradition as their mantra. Maybe they need to be reminded that everything changes and that tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. Fascinating topic. Always look forward to you videos.
Thank you for sharing this comment. I just ordered it. You might be interested in Uncle John's Bathroom Readers series or The Extraordinary Origins Of Every Day Things by Charles Panati
I would *LOVE* to see all those attempts to combine a fork and a spoon. The spork was one way, but the Australian _splayd_ was another. Interestingly, I wonder why splayds didn't become common for eating Italian pasta.
Writer/ philosopher Robert Fulghum believed that not only was the kitchen the best place to work on small repairs, but that if you accidentally snapped the tip off of the butter knife, no problem, you now had an improved screwdriver!
Ha. Good one. But Who still uses a VCR? I have one new in the box that I bought 16 years ago as a spare because it was on sale. It is still unopened and new. I haven’t watched a DVD in nearly a year, either.
I remember as a child my mother would scold me if I didn't switch the fork to my right hand after cutting a piece of meat. She said is was poor table manners to use my left hand to put the food in my mouth and it was just plain lazy. I'm right handed and I'm certain that if I were left handed should would have switched rule around to accommodate a left handed person. Can I just say I watched this video 8 minutes after its posting and saw there was already a thumbs down. Seriously, you're so dedicated to being an Internet troll that you thumbs down a History Guy video? That's a person who needs professional help.
It is a sad individual who cannot stand a little education first thing in the morning. That person probably hasn't progressed to the point of even using a fork yet.
As a lefty, I only recently noticed this "switching phenomenon" in right handed people. I've always put the fork in my left and and knife in my right and never felt the need to switch hands to cut my food at all.
@@91jvdb same. As a lefty, I'm somehow better at cutting food when I hold the fork with my left, keeping the meat more stable, and the knife should be sharp enough to do the job without wasting valuable hand-switching time.
@@jordaneggerman4734 we're probably more ambidextrous that we're willing to admit haha. I always say there's people who are left handed and people who are stupidly left handed
I have a very extensive silverware set from the 30’s that my grandmother collected then handed down to my mother who collected more pieces and then handed down to me. It’s a very popular pattern from Rogers bro’s. Called First Love, and it sits nicely in a large silverware chest in the dining room. The chest has six drawers to hold the many different pieces. I have lots of forks, dinner forks, grille forks, grapefruit forks, salad forks, oyster forks, and desert forks. I have to still find ice cream forks but they are very hard to find and rather expensive. My service is of 12 place settings and has just as many different kinds of spoons and four different kinds of knives. I love to host formal dinners and create multi course meals to utilize all my pieces. A table setting with multiple forks knives and spoons looks very beautiful and it’s always fun to see the looks on people’s faces as they try to figure out which utensil to use and when. As a good host I always tell them just follow my lead and use the item on the outside and work your way in. Of course to have such a set of silverware one must also have an extensive china collection with multiple plates and bowls to use for each course and I also have a large crystal drink ware collection as I like to serve a different beverage with each course. I love fine dining and I love having a formal dining room that is just for fancy dinner parties. I studied the history of the fork and like to tell my guests it’s story as dinner conversation. Unfortunately during this pandemic dinner parties are not being held but I have a daily good China set that I eat with for everyday isolated meals. I just think you should have a daily China, good China and fine China and you should have everything in the same pattern that reflects your personal style. In the 80’s I was the manager of the fine China, crystal and silver department in an upscale department store called the Broadway in southern California which has long since been closed. In those days I was trained to help new brides come into the store and fill out their bridal registry lists and I would help them pick out their patterns. Sadly in today’s world people do not put much concern into China service and usually just have one set of dishes or paper plates. The days of refined dining have gone out of style and so have I, but it’s always a treat to be invited to Sunday dinner cooked by me.
I hated, loathed, detested (well, you get the idea) polishing the silverware when I was growing up. My fine flatware says "Stainless" on it and that suits me perfectly. I used to have china plates with metal (I won't call it silver) edges, but the microwave hated it so it is all gone. We are a bit short on household staff, and since neither of us get any enjoyment out of fiddling with dishes, we simplified. There is nothing sad about it in our estimation. I
Yeah eating with a fork is so easy, there is no reason to swap and I rarely see anyone do this except maybe in videos. I have tried flipping the fork up over on both sides but I prefer the American way.
Oddly I just can't eat without switching hands! I tried when in Canada and it just felt so wrong. Goes to show that when you do something long enough, the habit becomes part of you.
Another great episode! Seriously love your videos. Nice to see people who still discuss history as historians aka not politicizing or viewing it through biased modern lenses. Also, as someone who was born and raised in Nigeria where eating with hands is more culturally suited (we do use cutlery but for many of our dishes hands are better and it helps strengthen cultural bonds, trust me) this video was sooo fun to watch! Reminds me of the time I went to Catholic secondary school. They enforced cutlery use with religious intent😂 and it was so damn awkward and funny.
Usually RU-vid's algorithm annoys me but it was spot on recommending *The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered!* I'm addicted. The old photos and paintings really bring the stories to life. It's as if *The History Guy* was born for this. =)
As a 13 year old Army Brat living in France in the 1960's I observed how the French used their forks and adopted that style. It is more efficient so I gave it a try and never looked back. 55 years later I don't even think about it.
@@dbmail545 You may of hit upon part of the reason of the different usage. The types of foods we eat with which utensil. How of earth would a person eat beans with a fork held European style? So I imagine, by being separated by the big pond, that we have probably used the fork to eat foods our European cousins do not.
Don't know how I started but I use my fork and knife in the European style. But I can also use my knife to pick up food and just use the fork to hold it in place, that's how a lot of people who lived on farms, and the backwoods used them when I was a young boy.
@@ronfullerton3162 Yup. As a Spaniard, the fork only comes out for the main (served second) dish, if the first is kinda liquid-y and not a salad or something. For those (and beans are usually prepared as part of a very thick soup that we call 'potages' in Spain), we just use spoons, and no knife at all, since we push the food around with a piece of bread on the left hand, if need be. And when the dish requires no sharp cutting utensil, of course (like with a spanish tortilla, or a salad for example), we use the fork on the right hand... and also a piece of bread in the left, to help push the food that can't we speared by the fork. But of course, we eat bread with _everything._ Including pasta. So the diet certainly influences which instrument to use. But switching hands after _every_ bite when eating, say, a stake? Preposterous for me. ;P
I had heard that about spies being caught because of their fork usage; somewhere before. Not sure if it was in a movie or not. But, that story is out there floating around. Very interesting!
Always interesting, always educational. Very well done. On a side note, unless it has already been mentioned, in regards to your introductory scene, I believe that knives in a place setting are laid with their blades facing inboard. The only advantage to working summers as a busboy.
Ralph Craig, about the time they came out of booster seats. The banging elbows got old with them quickly. They are 15 now and when we go to a restaurant they still jockey for positions at the booth tables. Lol.
@@PurpleObscuration We'll have to agree to disagree. Often the subject demands more time or you might as well just skip it. THG used to try to get his vids that short, but discovered that it just didn't work. I'd actually like to see him do some that require half an hour or more to properly cover the story. But some days my attention span is pretty short, too!
@@jerrymiller276, It's me, I realize that RU-vid is not the medium to get into great detail. I use RU-vid as a source for topics and if a topic interests me I look for books on the subject at the local library.
History Guy; I Like Your Subjects ; On Forgotten History That Deserves To. Be Remembered; It’s So Enlightening, Interesting And Educational. Keep Up The Good Work, Mr & Mrs History Guy & Lady.
Imagine what we'd think if someone sat down in front of you at a dinner and pulled out some fancy tool you've never seen to eat with. She was ahead of her time. 😂
There are other odd combinations of flatware that are out there. The spoon knife being one of them and the fork. Then there is also a combination of the knife fore and spoon in one utensil.
My mother worked at a US Consulate and we would occasionally have American ambassadors over for supper. I was always fascinated with how clumsy they used their fork to eat. They were equally fascinated that we were so different in our style of using a fork in our left hand (Canadian) Thank you for the reminder.
I have never seen anyone eat in either way. In NY you hold the fork in your right hand (dominant) and the knife in your left and you don’t change. Cutting with your left hand using the fork with your right… the cutting does not take as much dexterity so it’s easy to do with your non-dominant hand.
HI I am a German immigrant to Australia. And I did not experience any difference in ' Fork Culture' ! Everybody just ate their food tines up, and definitely no switching! Fork stays in left hand and knife in right. All this amazing history of differences in knife and fork usage is totally new to me! I had thought, prior to this vid, that my eating utensil usage was universal! Shalom to us only in Christ Yeshua.
Hmmm... Interesting, H.G. As late as my grandfather's childhood, elegant dinners were accompanied by a finger bowl. I wonder if the finger bowl was the last gasp of the old, pre-fork way?
Most American table manners come directly from an American writer named Emily Post, who wrote a book called Etiquette (which was very popular, and is in fact in its 19th edition today) which defined the proper way to do almost everything in life, including eating. She wrote the first edition shortly after the end of the War of 1812, when anti- British sentiment was very high in the US. The manners she described were a deliberate slam at European (especially British) manners. Anything they would do, we would not do (" In America, bread is not used to mop the juices from the plate"). Keeping the fork in the left hand was one of the things she deemed ill-mannered, and so most Americans began to do the Switch.
I think I know the movie - or at least A movie - in which a german infiltrator revealed because of the way he eats. *The Big Red One* with Lee Marvin from 1980. The movie is based on the director Samuel Fuller's own experiences during the war, but I don't know if that includes the detail with the spy. It's a great scene, though.
It came from an older movie with Alan Ladd about the OSS. In the training US operatives are taught to eat the Continental Style. Later in the movie one of them switches in a restaurant and is immediately identified. Learning customs and idiocyncracies of the culture you wish to infiltrate is vital to an agents survival.
Tarantino did an homage to this in "Inglorious Basterds" when a Bittish agent is outed by holding up three fingers for the waitress when Germans use the thumb, index, and middle finger. In German the Thumb is "1" apparently.
@@shawnr771 As I watched the video, I remembered the movie he was referring to, but I saw it many, many years ago and couldn't recall its title. That was how I was made aware that there even WAS more than one method of cutlery use, so I must have been very young. I do remember that the agent in question realized his mistake immediately and signaled his contact that he was about to be arrested by turning up the collar of his jacket...funny how a detail in a scene from a movie I saw 50 years ago (or more) is clear to me, but I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner last night...LOL
I'm British, right handed, and yet I use always hold the knife in my left hand, and use the fork in the right hand (prongs down). That's because I'm a free-thinking anarchist :)
Gareth, as an American I do the same. Right hand fork always, if I need to cut I pick up the knife with my left and cut. Seems easier and requires less coordination, :) As for the prongs, I would say they flip up and down based on the current food selection, e.g. meat down to cut, while beans or potatoes up to "scoop" them up, if necessary. I asked an etiquette teacher about this once and was told it is an accepted method, so I "stuck" with it (sorry could not resist the pun).
@@tonpal I am right-handed, however, there have been a couple of periods in my life I was forced to do things left-handed due to injury ( broken right hand, then broken right wrist) and can write fairly well with both hands now. All of which may contribute to my ease of use now, but I do not ever remember eating any other way.
@@tonpal yes I'm right-handed. I've just always had the inclination to pick up the fork with my right hand; I always switch the utensils over in restaurants. I've even tried to adopt the 'correct' convention and it just feels wrong. I guess that's what comes from not having etiquette lessons.
The use of forks is thought to affect the straightness of teeth adversely... Using the fork the American-way allows any drips to fall off before being brought to the mouth, and not go down the arm. The fork's curve acts as a break point.
As a kid I was taught the switch the hand thing. It never caught. I hold my fork in right hand to hold the meat. And manipulate the knife with my left hand. Doing living history I use a spoon.
I was raised on the prairies of western Canada, and we have a very practical approach to any operation. So we used the fork in the left hand to cut up the whole steak into bite-sized pieces, then switched the fork into the right hand to shovel up all the food on the plate. Maybe crude but very efficient....
The American vs European fork etiquette was my mind blowing fact of the day, just because my whole life I did notice the differences with how people eat their steak, now that I look back on it. In reality a lot of us like to cut and eat with our dominant hand. Keep up the fun and informative videos! 😁Also I didn't know I would be in for a crash course on fork architecture, but I am here for it.