Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of Utensils

Starting point is 00:00:00 They are so ubiquitous that most people don't even realize they have an origin. They're so commonly used that many of you might have them in your hands right now. Yet the objects we use to eat with have very definite histories. Moreover, around the world, we use very different objects to consume our food, and sometimes we use the exact same objects in very different ways. Learn more about eating utensils, how they were developed, and how they're used in different cultures on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

Starting point is 00:00:42 ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. There is a statistic that has floated around for years, and I don't know how accurate it is, but it seems reasonable, that about one-third of the world eats using their hands, one-third of the world uses chopsticks, and he has. the other third uses cutlery. As we'll see, these divisions between how people eat are not necessarily cut and dry, and it isn't either one or the other. So let's start with a brief overview of eating with your hands. This obviously is the way all humans originally ate. Today,

Starting point is 00:01:30 you can find billions of people who eat this way with the two largest centers of it probably being in South Asia and East Africa. If you've ever been to an Indian restaurant, you probably ate with cutlery. However, in most of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, people will mostly eat directly with their hands. If you're familiar with food from this region, this is how it was designed to be consumed. Most meals will be some sort of curry-type dish, and it will be rice and or a flatbread. The curry will be added to the rice which serves to thicken it, which makes it easy to pick up. You might be wondering, wouldn't this make your fingers really messy if you did this? And the answer is yes, but the same is true if he had barbecue ribs or

Starting point is 00:02:09 buffalo chicken wings. Likewise, many of the flatbreads, which are served such as non-chapati or roti, are designed to be torn off in pieces, and then each piece is used to pick up food by pinching it. I've actually learned to eat this way, and whenever I go to an Indian restaurant, I will often get a nod of approval from the owners or the wait staff. I went to an Indian restaurant in Singapore once, which was a cheap hole-in-the-wall joint that catered mostly to Indian construction workers in the city. The meal was served on a banana leaf, and there were no utensils at all. In Ethiopian cuisine, it's very similar.

Starting point is 00:02:38 Most meals will be served on top of a spongy flatbread known as injera. injura serves as both the plate and the bread for eating with your hands. One thing you'll find in most cultures where they eat with their hands is that you should always wash your hands both before and after you eat. Also, most people will usually only eat with one hand, usually the right hand. It's part of Islamic etiquette to only eat with your right hand because your left hand is often used for cleaning yourself after you relieve yourself. With that, let's move to the first actual eating utensil in history, the knife.

Starting point is 00:03:09 It isn't known when the knife was invented, but it had to be one of the first tools ever created by humans. The first knives were made out of wood or bone, and they were eventually made out of much better materials such as flint or obsidian. And just as an aside, some stone knives can be extremely sharp. It's possible to create a blade made out of obsidian, which is as sharp as a razor. Eventually, knives were made out of iron and other metals, and they were the primary implement used in food preparation. In countries that use cutlery, depending on how fancy the dinner setting is, there can be as many as five different knives that could be set out at a table. A dinner knife, which usually has a serrated edge and a rounded tip. A salad knife, which is pretty much the exact same thing, only smaller.

Starting point is 00:03:51 A butter knife, which is really small and doesn't have any real sort of sharp blade. A fish knife, which is small with a point. And a steak knife, which would usually be the largest and sharpest knife at a place setting. And it's rare that all of these knives might be set out for the same meal. The development of rounded-tip knives supposedly came from King Louis XIV of France, who didn't like having so many people with pointed-tip knives at his banquets. Before the creation of blunt-tip knives, the problem with knives was, as indispensable as they are in preparing food, that they can also be used for, you know, murdering people.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Avoiding having weapons at the table was directly responsible for the development of the next oldest eating utensil, chopsticks. The oldest chopsticks which have ever been found date back about 3,200 years, and they were found in the Hennan province of China. They were made out of bronze. It's very probable that chopsticks made of wood might have been used earlier, but they were never preserved. It's believed that the original chopsticks were only used for food preparation for stirring pots or stir fry. They were believed to be first used for eating in the Han Dynasty about 2,000 years ago. I mentioned that the knife had something to do with the development of the chopstick, just as food in countries that eat with their hands is designed to be eaten that way, so too is food in countries that use chopsticks.

Starting point is 00:05:07 The entire overarching theory behind East Asian food, the region where chopsticks are most prevalent, is that you never need to use a knife at the table, because all chopping should be done in the kitchen. There are differences in chopsticks which vary by country. Japanese chopsticks are tapered and have pointy ends. Korean chopsticks are usually metallic and are flat. Chinese chopsticks are more rounded and have blunted ends. There are over 80 billion disposable chopsticks manufactured each year. They consume over 4 million trees, and each year they constitute one of the largest uses of timber in China.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Evidence for forks actually goes back further than evidence for chopsticks. There are pronged utensils that have been found in ruins in ancient Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome. Light chopsticks, the first forks, were not used for eating. They were used for cooking and serving food. The first evidence of a fork used at a table for eating goes back to the 4th century in the Byzantine Empire. The niece of the Byzantine Empire married the son of the Doge of Venice, and they reportedly had forks at their wedding reception in the early 11th century. Forks became popular in Italy, and their popularity corresponded with the rise of the popularity of pasta. However, it took centuries for forks to really catch on.

Starting point is 00:06:17 It wasn't until the 17th century in Italy that they became really popular. It was common for Italians to carry their own fork and spoon with them in a box called a candina. The fork gradually spread to Spain, Portugal, and France. However, it didn't catch on in northern Europe and Great Britain until the 18th century, and it wasn't until the late 18th century during the revolution that forks finally caught on in the United States. Today, there are probably more different types of forks than any other utensil. There are specialty for oysters, meat, asparagus, olives, salads, pickles, sardines, and pastries. They vary by length, size, and the number of tines.

Starting point is 00:06:55 Spoons, like knives, date back to prehistory. While they might not be as old as using a piece of bone or sharp flint, the problem of consuming liquids was certainly an early one for humans. The predecessor to the spoon was the bowl, and it wasn't much of a stretch from a bull-like object to a spoon. Spoons have been found in the tombs and ruins of almost every ancient culture. The early spoons that were found were usually made of ivory, stone, bone, or wood. By the times of the Romans and the Greeks, spoons were created out of bronze and other metals. It was early Muslims who supposedly first used spoons for eating soup. As with forks, there are many different types of spoons of different lengths and depths.

Starting point is 00:07:34 A special note is the Chinese spoon. Chinese spoons, which are often used in other Asian countries as well, are much broader and deeper than Western spoons, and can hold much more liquid. They were actually more popular than chopsticks in China up until about the 10th century. The way all of these utensils are used can differ greatly around the world. For example, there are differences between European and American norms for using a fork and knife. The American way involves switching hands after you cut something and having the tines of the fork facing up. In Europe, you don't switch hands, and the tines of the fork are supposed to face down. In some countries like Thailand, dishes are often eaten with a spoon in the dominant hand and a fork in the other hand.

Starting point is 00:08:16 Noodle dishes might be eaten with chopsticks and other dishes might be eaten with your hands. There's always been a great deal of debate about if you should use your hands or chopsticks when eating sushi. In Japan, I've seen people eat Unagi sushi and rolls both ways, and there doesn't seem to be a consensus. But sashimi should always be consumed with chopsticks. And I should end by mentioning the bastard child of all eating utensils, the spork. Believe it or not, the spork actually dates back to the 19th century. It was invented by a guy named Samuel Francis, who received a patent for it in 1874. There were actually several pens issued over the years for spork-like devices.

Starting point is 00:08:54 The word spork, which is, of course, just a portmanteau of the word spoon and fork, was first found in a dictionary in 1912. Today, believe it or not, the term is actually trademarked, and some competitors have started using the term fork spoon to get around it. The interesting thing about utensils is how uninteresting they are. There are very simple things that we use every day, and most people have never probably given it a thought as to how, they were developed over time.

Starting point is 00:09:20 These objects of everyday life have become central to many cultures and are the subject of what are often elaborate rules of etiquette. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Guy P. over at Podcast Republic. He writes, I drive ride chair for a living and I don't know how I'd make it through the day without

Starting point is 00:09:46 something great to listen to. Your podcast is my fave while I'm out on the job driving people around. It always keeps them entertained and asking the name. Thanks, Guy, or perhaps it's Guy, if you live in Quebec. I'm honored to be a part of your workday. And by the way, if any passengers are in the car right now listening to this, make sure you leave a good tip. Remember, if you leave a review or send in a question,

Starting point is 00:10:09 you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of Utensils

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