May 13 - The Table Knife is Born!

Posted on May 13, 2021

This is an update of my post published on May 13, 2010:

As you probably know, people use several different items when eating food—fingers being the most popular and universal. Chopsticks, spoons, knives, and forks are also widespread and ancient.

In medieval Europe, no cutlery was provided even at posh dinners. So it was a situation of BYOK – bring your own knife. Personal daggers that the diners wore on their belts – and in sheaths, when not in use!) was used as both fork and knife – food was cut and stabbed and brought up to ones mouth on knife point!

Even in the centuries after that, when forks were in common use, the knives used at dinner tables in the West were sharp-pointed hunting daggers (or special dining knives that were shaped just like sharp-pointed hunting daggers).

Apparently France’s Cardinal Richelieu didn’t like the fact that his dinner guests picked their teeth with the points of their knives. On this day in 1637, he ordered that the points of his dining knives be ground down into rounded ends.

His new table knives caught on. Everyone in Louis XIV’s court wanted a set! Louis XIV himself ordered his dinner knives have rounded tips—and went further to decree that all his subjects follow suit. Eventually, the new table knife spread throughout the European continent, to England, and to the British colonies in the New World.

More than just table knives…

When it comes to dinner manners, we got more from the French than just table knives and not picking our teeth with our knives. We got the word etiquette, a fancy word that means “manners.” Basically, etiquette is a code of behavior for social occasions.

A formal set of manners is at least as ancient as the Fifth Dynasty of the ancient Egyptians. Some of the “good manners” of the past would be unacceptable now. For example, at certain places and times, it was considered good manners to throw one’s chicken bones and beef rib bones onto the floor, and to wipe one’s fingers on the tablecloth. An early etiquette guide from the Dutch philosopher Erasmus, in 1526, states such gems as:

“You should wipe your spoon before passing it to a neighbor.”

“Do not blow your nose with the same hand that you use to hold the meat.”

Etiquette isn’t just a set of arbitrary rules. Its purpose is to help people in groups to feel more comfortable. We all benefit from the fact that people know not to spit at the table, for example. We prefer to eat with people who ask for food to be passed rather than reach over us to grab food, and we prefer to eat with people who don’t gobble food and slurp soup.