Recipes

• Chicken Croquettes

• Dusted Deviled Eggs

• Potato Pancakes Crowned with Crab

• Stuffed New Potatoes Two Ways

The hands have it, and I’m not happy about it.

Let’s face it: There may not be another two-word phrase that provokes such palpable disgust as "finger foods."

Finger foods and the eating of food with hands is the revival of the primordial method. Accepting them is to deny the, well, fork in the road to civilization — just grab and shovel food in. When humanoids got off their knuckles to start playing with fire, the long arch of civilization began.

Call them commonplace, the utensils that we use everyday (or once used everyday). But they are the embodiment of the history of civilization — nothing less. What, and more importantly how, we ate came to differentiate man from beast and eventually man from man. The fork was the tool that told the tale.

But while it took centuries for flesh hot from the kill to become the boar's head on a salver, the imposition of the fork is of relatively recent vintage.

At the beginning of the first millennium, a Venetian Doge brought a Byzantine bride to court, where her use of a fork — common to Middle Eastern royalty — caused a scandal. The clergy inveighed against this blatant luxury claiming, "God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks — his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating," thereby giving a fork all the charm of a prosthesis.

How wrong they were. Forks — as well as knives, spoons, and the myriad manifestations they spawned — were not merely a means to more quickly convey food from the plate to a greedy diner's maw. The opposite, actually. As Western societies became more sophisticated, each new piece of flatware became an impediment to gluttony (a deadly sin, don't forget), meant to slow the process, to assist constraint. Worked for some, not for others.

Royals and nobles were the first to possess forks — the poor counted themselves lucky if they had something to eat; how they ate it was pretty much irrelevant. In 14th-century Europe forks were collectable, exotic utensils, owned but rarely used. Although France's Charles V listed two-tined forks in his household inventory, they were strictly for foods that were sticky or staining.

Forks caught on in Italy by the 1400s, some say due to the proliferation of pasta in need of a twirl. Its spread can be credited to another princess. When the Italian Catarina de Medici was betrothed to Henry II in 1533, she brought her retinue of perfumers, dressmakers, and cooks along with the fork and its use to France. Before this royal imprimatur, the fork was dismissed in France as an Italian affectation. Forks, after all, were for sissies — a view that lasted for centuries. Indeed, that's exactly how Englishman Thomas Coryat was branded in the early 17th century when, after returning from an Italian sojourn, he openly used a fork. Coryat's defense was that "... the Italian cannot by any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike cleane." He was on to something there.

The fork as we know it, with four curved tines, began to proliferate in Europe during the middle of the 18th century. In America the "split spoon" — as forks were sometimes called — did not come into general use until the 19th century. And then it was off to the races. The Victorian era produced an avalanche of tableware. No dish was without a specific utensil assigned to it. Sardine forks, salad forks, the fish fork, lobster fork and oyster fork, the cheese fork, olive fork, dessert fork, forks for strawberries, for pies and for toasting bread, and a vast number of serving forks. There were a commensurate number of knives and spoons and woe be to him, and especially to her, who did not know which was for what.

The meal, as ritual, would have been impossible without its accouterments. Forks, knives and spoons — how they were made and what they were made of — differentiated the social ranks. The possession of, familiarity with, and use of fork and knives were, and still are, signifiers of sophistication. As with what you wore, they said something about who you were and had everything to do with where you were seated, what you ate and how you ate it. Table etiquette evolved out of necessity as the use of forks, knives and spoons increased.

So when a decline in tableware and its use occurs, socialization also experiences a decline. Such was the plight of the 20th century. Gentility began to take a back seat about the same time that the first White Castle opened in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921. (White Castle must also be held responsible for recent upmarket variations on their signature finger food — the slider. Has there ever been a more repugnant name given to an otherwise tasty item?) Soon eating with your hands was deemed acceptable. Who knew how ubiquitous it would become.

By now we have watched two generations eat their meals with their hands. The EggMcMuffinBigMacchickenfingerpizzafrenchfriesburritofalafelgyro generations don't have many opportunities to employ a fork. When they do it is with an observable awkwardness. The hands may have it for the moment, but this is a situation that can, and must, be overcome. I’ll admit that there are certain foods in which the hands may have been inherent in their creation. The sandwich is a construction that I venerate, but many can be put to the fork. Except for a you-should-be-so-lucky Tom Jones moment, shatteringly crisp bacon, potato chips, popcorn, cookies, and nuts, fingers and food should be mutually exclusive. Not since the 1600s have so many been in such intimate contact with their food. Bring back the fork — the single most important tool in the painful progress towards civilization. Take fork (and knife) not just to the sticky and staining but also to that slice of pizza, pear, or hot panino and take back personal dignity. Pack your own fork if necessary, because as Brillat-Savarin said, the destiny of a nation depends on the manner in which it feeds itself.

Edward Bottone, a food and lifestyle journalist, is Chef/Instructor in the Culinary Arts program at Drexel University and has been a radio talk show host and TV presenter, and is also a food stylist and photographer.

For a fabulous feast of forks and other utensils go see:
Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005
November 1, 2008 - February 1, 2009
Winterthur Museum & Country Estate
5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur DE 19735

Exhibition images couresty of Winterthur; food images couresty of Drexel University's Culinary Arts program, "The Cantankerous Cook" photograph from Hulton Archive/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.