A couple of weeks ago, an odd message appeared on Twitter. An American food writer, sitting in a very exclusive restaurant, posted a picture of a spoon. Unlike the average tweeted food porn, this was accompanied by a plaintive request: what is this thing and what is it for? The tweeter, Kat Kinsman, is managing editor of CNN Eatocracy and she was sharing a table with a group of other high-powered foodists at a dinner honouring Thomas Keller at the time she hit “send”. Kinsman has prior form with flatware, as she mentioned later: “I have an MFA [master of fine arts] degree in Metalsmithing and am always deeply amused by antiquated or single-purpose items like grape shears, lamb handles, fish knives, etcetera.” The spoon, as a rapid Google search established, was a cuillère à sauce individuelle, with a flat spatula-like bowl, so sauce can be scraped from the plate without tilting it, and a notch through which any superfluous fat can drain.
It’s reassuring to a food geek, of course, that such a specialised piece of kit exists. Yet the idea that a culinary Pythia of Kinsman’s stature had to connect with a worldwide network of food nerds to find out what the hell she was eating with means something is a little out of whack. As she puts it, “I felt in the presence of exceptional schmanciness.”
Any way you look at it, the use of utensils at table is culturally specific. In our own history, it was common to carry a knife in readiness for food. Only in the 17th century did the fork finally reach the English aristocracy, by way of France and Italy. Even then, it was regarded as an affectation and occasionally banned by the Church in various parts of Europe as an affront to God. The use of cutlery by ordinary people wasn’t common in England until the 18th century, when cheaper methods of mass production began to make such aspirational objects more widely available.