I think it would be useful for young married people who are setting up house together to know what they have to get in the way of knives, forks and spoons. I mean, of course, a complete service, so as not to cut a sorry figure when the duchess comes to dinner.
An inquiry which I have carried out in the knife, fork and spoon industry reveals that today there is an implement for every specific purpose, that each operation and each single item of diet requires its own implement (such as the traditional special equipment for fish), and that it is absolutely wrong to serve one dish with the implements designed for another. For example there are several different kinds of knife for steak, with normal edges or razor edges, with toothed or saw edges of various types. Then there is one with a wavy edge that is sharp on the inside of the curves but not on the crests of the waves where it touches the plate. Thus the plate remains unharmed, and the knife stays sharp.
There are special implements for eating fondue and others for lobster. There is a small knife for peeling oranges, with a saw edge and one large protruding tooth: the large tooth is used for cutting through the rind without piercing the segments, the saw-edged part for removing the neat quarters of peel.
There is a tiny knife for spreading bread and butter and there is another for use at the bar, with a tooth for lifting bottle-tops, a saw edge for peeling fruit, and three teeth at the end for pronging the slice of lemon and putting it in the glass.
There’s quite another knife for cutting the slices of lemon to put in tea, for as everyone knows it is not the actual juice of the lemon that flavours tea, but the liquid contained in the countless little pores of the rind. Well, this knife is specially made so as to break open these pores and extract the maximum flavour.
There’s a knife for chips, with a zigzag blade, another for shredding orange or lemon peel (or carrots or potatoes), there’s a kind of scalpel for fruit, there’s a curved knife for grapefruit and a matching spoon in the shape of a grapefruit section. There’s that tubular object with an opening on one side, for coring apples. There’s a spoon-shaped knife for making miniature ‘new’ potatoes out of big old hoary ones. And is there anyone who doesn’t know about the knife for making slits in chestnuts? Could any really smart household be without one? What would happen if the duchess, on a sudden impulse, ordered a roast chestnut for dinner?
Then there’s the broad, rounded saw-edged knife for tomatoes, made in such a way that the slices remain on the broad blade, and thus you can arrange them on the dish without touching them with your fingers — the very fingers with which you have just been holding the whole tomato.
And no kitchen must lack a battery of small knives for assorted uses, uses for which no really specialized instrument has yet been perfected. Certainly no Italian kitchen must be without a knife for cutting fresh pasta into tagliatelle or maltagliati, or be deprived of that little wheel with a zigzag edge and a handle, that you roll across a sheet of pasta to give it a zigzag edge like the border of a sample of cloth. In the same way, every English kitchen must be equipped with various knives for trimming pastry and making pretty patterns on it, as well as moulds and things for pressing out shapes, and an object (not an eggcup, if you please) for holding up the middle of piecrusts. You will also need a saw-edged bread-knife, a curved knife for making rolls of butter, a slice for creamy cake (made of silver) and a wicked short dagger or skean-dhu for opening mussels. Then there is the stubby round-bladed knife for cutting hard cheeses such as Parmesan. Just the thought of it makes your mouth water.
I must also tell you about the knife for cleaning and peeling mushrooms, the potato peeler with an adjustable blade, a knife for asparagus and a pair of tongs for eating them with. For snails you must also have a pair of tongs and a fork with miniature prongs. And what about all the other kinds of cheese?
Well, there’s the general, purpose cheese knife with a blade broad enough to serve helpings on. There’s a shorter and broader knife with the handle set nearly an inch higher than the blade, specially for soft cheeses, and one with an adjustable double blade for slicing gruyère. Some softer cheeses need a palette knife, of course, while mozzarella demands a broad semicircular blade and gorgonzola one of only moderate width. Nor must you forget that short, broad rounded knife for spreading butter on extra-thin slices of bread. For cutting such slices in the first place you need a small saw-edged affair that will not make the soft bread crumble. For semi-hard cheeses I recommend a medium-sized knife with the end bent up at right angles and three teeth on the tip. It can be used for offering cheese to guests, as well as for cutting it up. For rather less semi-hard cheeses there’s a similar knife but with barbed ends to the teeth so that the cheese doesn’t slip off in transit.
Housewives in Northern Italy will often serve polenta, which is maize-flour cooked into a sort of slab porridge. They of course will need a wooden spoon, if possible with a handle in the shape of a corn-cob. The effect of this is genuinely rustic, and when they bring such spoons to the table their city guests will almost explode with astonishment, as if to say, ‘What a daring hostess!’ But do not worry, gentle housewives, for the wood and the shape of the corn-cob are quite appropriate to polenta, and sooner or later your guests will realize this and smile with delight at your rustic spoon (coupled with the fact that the polenta itself was first-rate).
This list of indispensable tableware is naturally incomplete. I have left out the whole range of spoons, from serving spoons to ice-cream spoons, from those with bent handles, made for children, to those especially for strawberries. I have left out the ladles and the strainers, the tin-openers and the corkscrews, the fork that is also a spoon and the fork with the cutting edge. I have quite forgotten to mention the spring-operated tongs for serving spaghetti, sugar-tongs, ice-tongs, nutcrackers for walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds… I have neglected the special fork for capers and the other for olives, the tubular spoon for marrow-bone, the palette knife for omelettes, the shears for cutting up chickens. Nor have I included the pincers for frogs’ legs, or the perforated spoon for fried marrow-flowers.
If this partial and incomplete list leaves you wondering how you are going to pay for everything, or how you can possibly build a piece of furniture large enough to contain all this stuff; if you are in two minds about the style to choose, or the material (for it goes without saying that all these things can be obtained with handles made of silver, steel, ceramic, horn, hoof, perspex, etc., and in modern style, more modern style, ultra-contemporary style, antique style, more antique style, antediluvian style, comic or serious, garish or restrained, elaborate or rustic, to suit all tastes), then you can always fall back on something else. What I am suggesting is most original, and I am bound to agree is a last resort. The table implements used by the Japanese do not give you any feeling of inferiority, and they do not have to be washed because at the end of the meal you simply throw them away. So you need not worry about where to keep them, or about moth and rust corrupting, or that thieves will break through and steal your silver. They cost very little and millions of people have been using them for thousands of years. They are made of natural wood, like two giant toothpicks ten inches long, and in Japan you can buy them in packets of a hundred in any big store. They are easy to use, and the food is cut up beforehand into mouthful-sized pieces.
Millions of people have been using them for thousands of years. But not us! No! Far too simple.