Tine Time

Everything You Thought You Knew About Forks and Knives Is Wrong

Stick a fork in it.
Stick a fork in it. Photo: Ljupco Smokovski/? Ljupco Smokovski 2007

Slate writer Mark Vanhoenacker dares to question the peculiar habit of diners who use a knife to cut a steak, for example, only to put the utensil down and replace it with a fork. Europeans and everyone else in the world don’t abide by the shifty “cut-and-switch” method, which apparently was gifted to nineteenth-century American rubes by haute French people, and then it stuck for the next hundred-odd years. “The more time you waste pointlessly handing utensils back and forth to yourself, the less time you’ll have to cherish life and liberty, pursue happiness, and contribute to America’s future greatness,” writes Vanhoenacker. [Slate]

Everything You Thought You Knew About Forks and Knives Is Wrong