Hand To Mouth -- Flatware Should Reflect Our Manner Of Eating

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

You know that. The French philosopher, jurist and gastronome Brillat-Savarin wrote it in ``The Philosophy of Taste'' in 1826:

``Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.''

What he might also have said, but didn't: You are what you eat with. Different cultures, and different social classes within those cultures, eat with different things.

About one-third of the world's peoples eat with a knife, spoon and fork. Another third, mostly in east Asia, eat with paired sticks. The final third, from southeast Asia westward to the Asian subcontinent and to Africa (and beyond to my kitchen when barbecue is in the house), eat with their fingers.

Fingers, obviously, came first. But there has been considerable overlap - by hundreds of thousands of years. This is all about how knives, forks and spoons got the way they are.

When I was a child growing up in Connecticut, we visited a great aunt almost every Sunday in the rural outskirts of New Haven. She and her husband, sturdy old Bavarians, ran a sizable chicken farm. It was there, over countless chicken dinners, that the differences in forks made profound impressions upon me.

Why? Because I kept stabbing myself with them.

Old-fashioned German cutlery had very sharp, almost needlelike tines, and being young, hungry and hasty, I often jabbed myself in the lips.

Why were German forks so sharp? And American forks so blunt (and safe)? I didn't know the answers then - other than to pay better attention while eating with the German ones. But I do now.

Because they - and we - ate differently. For the most part, we still do. Most Europeans eat with the fork in the left hand, with the handle nestled into the cup of the palm and, with the curves of the tines pointing downward, spear their food, pushing it onto the fork with a knife held in the right hand. The fork tines have to be sharp.

Americans shovel their food right-handed, much as if they were using a spoon (and there is a reason for this, too), changing instruments - and hands - if they need to pick up a knife to cut something. Europeans eat using both hands simultaneously.

Obviously, if you are going to shovel food, you want flattened tines and they don't need to be sharp.

Of all the implements people use to feed themselves, the knife came first. Archaeologists have found primitive knives in Africa and Asia dating back 1.5 million years. Knives were used for killing, scraping, butchering and probably for eating. Humans have carried knives (or swords) and used them at the table since prehistory.

The spoon came next. While a knife is a tool, a spoon is really an extension of the palm of the hand. A spoon is a scoop for lifting liquids, and it came into use 20,000 years ago in Asia and the Middle East.

Our word for it comes from the Anglo-Saxon ``spon,'' which means chip. The first spoons were probably hollowed-out wood or bone scoops, but later spoons were commonly made of bronze, tin, silver and gold.

Next came chopsticks. The Chinese invented chopsticks - possibly as an adaptation of tongs used to lift hot items from cooking fires - at least 5,000 to 6,000 years before the Christian era. Why not knives and spoons?

``We sit at the table to eat, not to cut up carcasses,'' wrote an ancient Chinese philosopher.

The Chinese and Japanese, then and now, prefer to pre-cut their foods in the kitchen - for at least two reasons. First, it is more refined and easier to eat. Second, pre-cut meats and vegetables can be cooked quickly and with an economy of fuel.

Chopsticks (from kwai-tsze, meaning quick ones) are designed to isolate and lift small items. You cannot eat a Porterhouse steak with a set of chopsticks.

The fork came last, around 1100 A.D. in northern Italy. Derived from both the trident of the fisherman (and gladiator) and the farmer's pitchfork, it was not at first considered a handy innovation at the dinner table. It was thought to be foppish if used by a man or too fastidious if used by a woman.

Up until then, all westerners ate with spoons, a knife and their fingers. How they employed their fingers was socially important. The wealthy, the landed and the gentry used the thumb and the first and second fingers. Commoners commonly used all five.

Noble Italian women in the 12th century had their food cut for them and picked up the pieces with a dainty, sharp, two-tined fork, often made of silver or gold. The practice spread to France and finally to Britain, where Thomas a Beckett introduced it after returning from his exile in France in 1170.

AS LATE AS 1626, THE USE OF THE

fork by Italian aristocracy was ridiculed by other European cultures as effete.

The fork remained a noble, upper-class implement for several centuries; it was only after the French Revolution that it became widely used by the well-to-do French merchant class, who began to accumulate sets of flatware as a symbol of status - an expensive escape from the social leveling of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Probably because the fork came late to America, when it did arrive it was used more like its predecessor, the spoon - as a scoop rather than as a spear, and by itself in the right hand.

The round-ended table knife first replaced the pointed, dagger-like knife at the table in the 1630s in France. The Duc de Richelieu (the villain of the Dumas novels) was offended because his guests constantly picked their teeth at table with his knives. He ordered his staff to grind the pointed ends round.

The care of flatware was a continuing nuisance until the 20th century. Early steel forks rusted and were discolored by food acids. Silver forks tarnished. Gold tableware disappeared with the guests. Cleaning and polishing any of it was a weekly chore.

Stainless-steel flatware originated in Meriden, Conn. (an early center of American silversmithing), in 1921. By the mid-1930s it was widely used in both the United States and Europe.

Because Americans hold their flatware differently from Europeans, the handle shapes evolved differently. We hold our fork like a pencil, with the upper handle outside of contact with the hand; therefore the handle can be ornate, carved and decorative.

Because many Europeans cradle the handle of the fork in the palm of the left hand, it has to be comfortable, usually rounded and fairly substantial. European flatware, especially French and Italian, and with the exception of some more modern Danish designs, tends to be larger than U.S. patterns.

In the American hotel and restaurant trades, the decline in flatware quality in recent years has been obvious - and regrettable.

For reasons of cost and upkeep, the use of silver plate went first. But even quality stainless is less in use than it once was. Pilferage is one problem - although just plain loss by careless staff is an equal problem. (Forks and spoons get rolled up in table linen and end up at the laundry.)

But increasingly, even marginally good restaurants try to save operating costs by stocking new ventures with inexpensive flatware, much of it from Asia.

``If you try to cut corners on a half-million-dollar restaurant by cutting back in the kitchen or dining room, your architect or building codes probably won't let you,'' a commercial supply house salesman told me. ``But if you want to save several hundred bucks by ordering cheap stainless, who's going to stop you?''

TO ME, QUALITY FLATWARE MAT-

ters. It is the ultimate in day-to-day ergonomics. You may use a tennis racket once a week, but your tableware is something you handle every time you eat. It should feel good and perform well.

Crudely stamped steel implements from Korea and Taiwan can actually hurt the backs of fingers - and at least feel unpleasant. Nothing about eating should begin with irritation.

Over the years, I have used a variety of flatware. Some of the ones I liked most are no longer made - or not easily available. The old, wooden-handled, black ebony flatware from Germany I have not seen in Seattle in some time. (The last set I saw was in Munich a few years ago - made by either Henckels or Wusthof, I believe, and I wish profoundly that I'd bought it.) I understand there are now some Japanese copies in stainless, but I haven't found them.

I did buy a set of Dansk (Danish-designed, German-made) teak-handled stainless about 20 years ago. It was, I thought, warmly attractive and felt wonderful in the hand. But it was a minor chore to care for: It had to be hand-washed and quickly dried, and the wood handles periodically had to be oiled.

Nevertheless, if it were still available, I'd happily buy another set. (Occasional divorce tends to diminish all manner of holdings.)

In order to find the size flatware I wanted, with big, round, comfortable handles, I went to Europe. I liked several Italian patterns but finally decided on a French set that I found in an upscale department store (Aux Trois Quartiers) near the Madeleine in Paris.

It was a fairly expensive high-chrome stainless by Bouillet Bourdelle; the pattern was called ``Aube'' (paddle). Chromium gives stainless steel its luster; nickel makes it tough, somewhat dull and more scratch-resistant. Some people like the way high-gloss stainless ``ages'' as it gradually mars.

The French pattern's one drawback is that the heavy handle tends to flip the fork over unless it is slid well onto the plate. In any case, they look fine, require no special care and feel great in the hand.

Although many contemporary styles use thin, pencil-like handles, avoid them. They look sleek; they feel insubstantial and unstable. A fork or spoon has definite up and down sides. A pencil does not.

Unlike pots or pans or blenders, restaurant-supply houses are not necessarily the best places to shop for flatware. For one thing, they sell it by the gross, not in place settings. For another, few of them stock the wide range of quality tableware they once did.

I SPENT A COUPLE OF WEEKS

browsing the Seattle-area stores and found some nice Italian patterns at Williams-Sonoma (400 Pine St.) and some even nicer French lines at Domaine in Bellevue (661 120th Ave. N.E.) across the parking lot from the new Larry's. Quality Danish, American and Japanese lines are available at The Bon Marche and Frederick & Nelson stores throughout the area.

I enjoyed some of the more subdued stainless patterns by Yamazaki (like their Old Denmark and Hafnia styles) carried by Frederick's - which are guaranteed against breakage or discoloration for life.

But whatever you buy, hold it in your hands for a while. Ultimately, you will spend more time holding your knives and forks than gazing at them. Buy the best you can afford, and use it every day.

Unless your guests are worth more to you than you are.

JOHN HINTERBERGER'S FOOD COLUMNS AND RESTAURANT REVIEWS APPEAR SUNDAYS IN PACIFIC AND FRIDAYS IN TEMPO. HE ALSO WRITES A WEDNESDAY COLUMN FOR THE SCENE SECTION OF THE TIMES. BARRY WONG IS A TIMES STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER.