Forks

(20th December 2020)

Liz

Hello, and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history, I’m Liz

Hazel

And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history, as well as making and/or baking anything that we can. So, what have you been creating recently?

Liz

Well, at your request, I have been trying to figure out mosaic crochet

Hazel

Yes! It’s amazing

Liz

I haven’t quite got my head around it yet, because my brain just says “no you can’t keep skipping everything!”, but I think I’m almost there

Hazel

I’m gonna confess at this point that I have never actually done mosaic crochet. I’ve done mosaic knitting, but I don’t know how you do it in crochet, but for those that haven’t come across it, mosaic crochet or knitting is a technique in which you kind of skip some stitches and do others in order to make it look like a mosaic. Like, two colours, usually contrasting colours, interacting to make a pattern, and it’s really cool

Liz

Yeah, I’m...so basically, Hazel is going to make me a dress and I asked what I could make her in return, because reciprocity and friendship, and then Hazel basically went “so I’m really bad at finishing big projects, will you learn this technique and make me a blanket?” So I’m trying

Hazel

I am very excited. Yeah, very much appreciate. I have finished a blanket exactly once in my life, so this is good

Liz

It’s probably gonna be black and hot pink

Hazel

Ooh, that’s a good combination

Liz

It’ll look really bold and interesting, and also be really easy for me to keep track of which bit is which

Hazel

Excellent

Liz

So what have you been working on?

Hazel

I’m on a bit of a finishing kick at the moment, which is very odd for me, but I think it’s that, partly, getting to the end of the year and basically not having finished much, and then, like, I have a lot of unfinished projects and it’s getting to the point where it’s starting to make me feel guilty if I do new ones so it’s like

Liz

Ah, they’re watching you

Hazel

It’s kinda like it’s time, you know? So I did...I’m sure there are a lot of people who can relate to this feeling, you know. So I’ve been starting kind of small, I finished a beaded christmas bauble that has a dragon on it

Liz

Oh that’s cool

Hazel

It is very very cool. His name is Cedric, and I love him, and he’s very sparkly. So that’s a project from last year that’s finally done, and now I’m finishing off a hat that I started sometime earlier this year

Liz

It’s ok, you don’t have to admit how long

Hazel

I don’t even know, but it’s...it’s a crochet hat, and it’s nice, and I actually need a hat, so...as a measure of how long it’s been, the yarn, the colour of this hat has actually faded a little bit at the top from where it was left on a chair next to a window

Liz

Oh wow

Hazel

For a long time. Fortunately it looks kind of cool

Liz

So what you’re saying is it’s an ombre hat and everything’s fine

Hazel

Yeah, let’s go with that. Ombre hats are in this year

Liz

We have decided

Hazel

That’s definitely, definitely not a trend. I don’t even know how trends work any more, but we’re bringing that one back

Liz

I vaguely remember ombre hair being a thing, I don’t remember ombre hats

Hazel

Ombre clothing was definitely a thing, there was a while where everything was ombre. But it is not this day

Liz

So, surprisingly related to trends, and you’ll see why, would you like to learn about forks?

Hazel

I most certainly would. I’m excited to learn cutlery facts, although I keep being tempted to pronounce it cuttle-ry, and I feel like that might be a different thing

Liz

I feel like that’s like the cuttlefish version of humanity. Crimes against cuttle-ry.

Hazel

Or maybe…

Liz

Should do an episode on cuttlefish actually

Hazel

Yeah...do people eat cuttlefish, is that a thing?

Liz

They’re used for sepia dye, I believe, or at least were

Hazel

Oh, I didn’t know that. Great, you should do an episode on cuttlefish. Or cuttle-ry

Liz

But forks! So, the basic idea of something long and pronged for grabbing things is, you know, you pick up a stick and you do that, birds do that, but how old do you think the first eating forks are?

Hazel

I’m gonna go with maybe 18th century as like, a standard dinner table thing?

Liz

Ok, you are right in terms of Great Britain

Hazel

Oh! I’ll take that

Liz

But the oldest forks that archaeologists have found date to potentially 2000 BC

Hazel

Oh wow

Liz

In Bronze Age civilisations alongside the Yellow River in China

Hazel

Wow

Liz

So they’ve pretty much always been used in China which, yeah it seems to have been a class thing, because basically eating with a fork gives you more of an overbite. Like, the reason most people now have an overbite rather than looking like ancient skulls is because we eat with forks

Hazel

Oh, I think I remember vaguely hearing about this. So you can actually tell who’s been using a fork in the archaeological record?

Liz

Yeah, especially I believe the Han Dynasty

Hazel

That’s amazing

Liz

So yeah, these would be bone, or later you have bronze forks in Greece/Persia

Hazel

Are any of these still useable, ‘cause I kind of like the idea of eating with a thousand year old fork

Liz

I mean, you’d probably get kind of a weird taste from the verdigris on the bronze, but I mean (laughs) if you could steal it from a museum you could probably use it is as far as I’m willing to go

Hazel

Is it ethical to steal an ancient fork from a museum in order to perform experimental archaeology

Liz

Answers on a postcard

Hazel

Let us know! So what’s next on the journey of the fork?

Liz

So it spreads through the middle east, and then by the 11th century we’ve got it in Italy, at the same time as pasta, especially long pasta like spaghetti, becomes more prominent

Hazel

Ok

Liz

So between that and the noodles there is speculation that it’s basically forks were created, versus earlier eating with hands or just a single spike, so that we could eat noodles

Hazel

I love that

Liz

If you’re listening and you’re bad at using chopsticks, don’t worry, forks were literally developed for this purpose

Hazel

Also, before you mentioned the word forks, it did sound a bit like we were talking about a disease, like “it’s spreading through the Middle East and into Italy”

Liz

I mean, a lot of diseases did spread through the Middle East and into Italy, and then the rest of Europe

Hazel

I guess silk road, but it’s…

Liz

Yeah basically the silk road but it’s forks

Hazel

It’s forks. It’s fine. No-one’s hurt. It’s forks

Liz

So yeah, by the 1600s, you’ve got the middle and upper classes arriving to dinner with their own fork and spoon in a special box called a cadena

Hazel

Oh fancy

Liz

Which, this specific thing, the cadena, was then introduced to the French court by Catherine de Medici, who you may know from the show Reign

Hazel

Ah, amazing. Does there…’cause I, I will admit to enjoying a bit of Reign, but it’s been a while and, is the fork mentioned? Like, are there any forks in it?

Liz

There are forks used in Reign, ‘cause I remember watching it and pointing out to Nick, like, “those forks are historically accurate”, because I’m like that

Hazel

Of all the things that they could have had historically accurate in that show, they picked the forks

Liz

I mean a lot of shows, even shows set in the medieval era have people eating with two-pronged forks, regardless of whether they actually would have. I assume because it looks kind of gross to see people picking up food, like, you only really see that when it’s like “oh I’m Henry VIII and I’m gluttonous and terrible and I’m gonna eat the meat with my hands”

Hazel

Yeah the whole “I’m gonna throw the bones over my shoulders even though this is a royal dining room”

Liz

So yeah, we have writing by (figuring out pronunciation) Coryat from 1611 mentioning forks, but they were viewed as an Italian affectation

(they laugh)

Liz

An actual saint is on-record as saying that it seemed “effete and excessively delicate”

Hazel

Fellas, is it effeminate to use a fork?

Liz

Again, an actual saint

Hazel

Wow

Liz

Was anti-fork

Hazel

(laughs) Maybe that’s the next thing we can bring back in 2020. Anti-forking

Liz

I, I feel like this is not the year to become less hygienic

Hazel

Somebody ask Dr Anthony Fauci if he recommends using a fork

Liz

So the fork then spreads to Britain with...so the fork actually spreads to England with Catherine of Braganza, who was a Portuguese princess and wife of Charles II

Hazel

Ok, that rings a bell because of the Horrible Histories song

Liz

So she introduces it to the English aristocracy in the 17th century, and then by the 18th century it’s expected that there will be forks if you go somewhere to eat

Hazel

Ok. But you don’t have to bring your own any more

Liz

No

Hazel

Unless you’re like, super fancy

Liz

Interestingly, it didn’t really become popular in the US until pretty much the American Revolution

Hazel

Ok

Liz

Charles Dickens actually talks about people eating in Pennsylvania, on a riverboat, that they “thrust their broad-bladed knives and two-pronged forks further down their throats than ever I saw the same weapons go before, except in the hands of a skilled juggler”. Americans were apparently not good at eating with forks, according to Charles Dickens, in 1842

Hazel

That’s a bit dramatic

Liz

Yeah. There’s also a quote from an 1887 book of manners, explaining that forks are now fashionable, and explaining to the reader how to use a fork correctly, including for eating ice cream

Hazel

An ice cream fork?

Liz

So there are a lot of kinds of forks. You’ve probably heard of some of them, a chip fork like we talked about last time, or a dessert fork with the long prongs

Hazel

Mm-hmm

Liz

There’s also a cake fork, or a pastry fork, which I quite like, which basically has one tine flattened

Hazel

I do like the cake fork, yeah, so that you can, like, scoop up the cake

Liz

And then there is also various kinds of fork like the ice cream fork, the berry fork, and the terrapin fork

Hazel

The what sorry?

Liz

Terrapin fork, which was used for eating turtle soup, because these are all sporks

Hazel

Oh! Is that an important definition?

Liz

Well, they’re all different...you know, they’re all slightly different, so that you have to go and buy all of them to be fashionable

Hazel

Ah

Liz

But yeah, there is a chance that people like Jane Austin would have eaten with a spork

Hazel

Amazing. I mean, I know they probably wouldn’t have called it that, because the concept of mashing two words together wasn’t as big, but I like to imagine “spork” in the place of, like, “Elizabeth looked winningly over her spork at Mr Darcy at dinner”

Liz

Well the thing is, like, it does make sense to use sporks for these things, ‘cause you’ve got, you know, fruit served in syrup where you want to eat the fruit and the syrup, you’ve got soup which has bits in it so you wanna maybe spear a bit of terrapin when you’re eating your turtle soup

Hazel

Ok

Liz

And the ice cream, interestingly. So, during this kind of, I’m just gonna say the Jane Austin period, ‘cause people know what that is, ice cream was often served moulded, and you’d have a slice of ice cream on a plate, and you can’t eat off a plate with a spoon ‘cause that’s uncouth

Hazel

Oh no, that would be terrible

Liz

So you have a spork. And you cut a piece off the, the chunk from the mould that you’ve got on your plate, and you spear it

Hazel

Ok

Liz

Or if it’s started to melt you can scoop it up with, again, your spork. Possibly a sterling silver spork from Tiffany’s, as in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, because they did sell sporks

Hazel

Oh, now I want…

Liz

I mean cutlery sets...but that included sporks

Hazel

Now I want Tiffany’s spork jewelry

Liz

I’m sure that it’s possible, somewhere, to still get silver sporks, even if it’s only as a charm bracelet or something

Hazel

Spork earrings, how cute would that be

Liz

I would love spork earrings

Hazel

Wow. So, at this point was it still, like, an upper class thing, or had it spread? Had the sporks trickled down?

Liz

Sporks don’t seem to have tripled down. Tripled down? Trickled down, even. I can use words. Because these are, you know, you are hosting dinner parties, everything has to be very proper, you get all the correct cutlery. Most people would probably just use a normal fork. I mean most people would not have had ice cream or turtle soup

Hazel

I was gonna say, I imagine most...yeah I’m imagining most lower class people aren’t eating ice cream on the regular...like, you can get it as a street food can’t you, at this point, in the little tiny cups

Liz

Ice cream as a street food is...I’m gonna have to double check now

Hazel

‘Cause I seem to remember, and I can’t remember the precise era, the penny lick being a thing, where you could get, like, a little cheap scoop of ice cream in a cup and then you finish it

Liz

Lick it out

Hazel

And give the cup back, and they fill it up for someone else

Liz

This, yeah, the penny lick is late 19th century

Hazel

Ok

Liz

And was banned in Britain in 1899, because they didn’t really, they couldn’t really sterilise the glasses, and people got cholera

Hazel

Oh no

Liz

But yeah, I mean, poorer people may well have had the berries in syrup and some of the things you could eat with a spork, but they probably just used spoons

Hazel

Ok

Liz

I am just imagining a sort of up-and-coming merchant coming home like “darling, I bought the sporks”

Hazel

“We’re now a spork-owning family. Display them, forthwith!”

Liz

Forkwith. So, that is a brief history of forks, and sporks

Hazel

That is fantastic, I love it

Liz

So yeah, if you want an episode about anything you want, or if you want our recipes, we have a patreon, patreon.com/breadandthread

Hazel

You can also email us at breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com if you have any suggestions or ideas, or want to tell us whether or not it’s ok to steal a spork from a museum for experimental archaeology purposes, and you can find us on twitter @breadandthread for the same purpose

Liz

So Hazel, what is our local larder this week?

Hazel

So, I’m gonna talk about jellied eels

Liz

Lovely

Hazel

Now, this is quite a famous one. I’m not sure how internationally famous it is, but it’s certainly pretty famous within Britain, and possibly Europe, as a London dish, especially the East End of London

Liz

It’s what you eat if you’re a cheeky cockney

Hazel

It’s like the stereotypical East End food, and it’s one of those things like fish and chips that is like, a cheap, relatively cheap street food type thing, although, as I will go on to mention, it developed into a bit of a thing

Liz

Are you suggesting that people might be gentrifying food?

Hazel

Well surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, no-one has yet managed to gentrify jellied eels

Liz

That genuinely surprises me

Hazel

I feel like…

Liz

They gentrified broth, Hazel!

Hazel

I feel like there was an attempt during the, kind of, early 2000s hipster period. Certainly pie and mash, pie and mash shops have become, maybe perhaps a little bit of a gentrified thing, but jellied eels I’m pretty sure still remains something that is quite particular to perhaps older people living in the East End. Although, there is still a few shops that are, like, doing a roaring trade still so, debatable so, you know, it’s still going, it’s not dying out

Liz

That’s nice

Hazel

Yeah, it is. I’m, so I’m not entirely sure if I could become an aficionado of this regional dish myself. So, the jellied eel is eel, as you might expect. It’s cooked eel, usually boiled, with a kind of, like, special sauce, so I think it varies but usually

Liz

You make it sound so delicious

Hazel

Usually it contains things like herbs or spices, vinegar, and because the animal is quite...the eels are quite gelatinous, so that, kind of, goes out into the sauce as you cook it, and then when you put it into pots that all solidifies around the eel and preserves it

Liz

So is it just the collagen from the eel that does that then, rather than adding jelly in?

Hazel

As far as I can gather, yes. I mean, there may be different recipes hanging around, and not sure what...if you bought jellied eels in say, like, a specialist supermarket or something, or I think you can get them in some national supermarkets as well, they may contain extra preservatives for shelf life, but I believe the traditional way to make them is just to have the eel stuff, like, preserving it. Because this is actually quite an old thing, relatively. This apparently...well, eels have been eaten for a long long time, the rivers of Europe used to be absolutely full of eels.

Unfortunately, they are not really today, but back in the day the river Thames was chock-full of eels, they were super cheap, and therefore they made great food for the working classes, or like a great snack. So, jellied eels go back at least as far as the 1700s, possibly older, but this is a period where London is expanding quite rapidly in the Industrial Revolution, so that’s kind of when it becomes a thing, like, you can get stalls and shops specifically selling jellied eels and like, eel-based snacks. So eel pie is also popular, and I would definitely eat an eel pie

Liz

Yeah I’d try that. I mean, I have tried jellied eels. The jelly was off putting, I don’t do savoury jelly

Hazel

Ok, yeah, I’m not a jelly fan at the best of times, so…

Liz

I’d try it in pie form

Hazel

Yeah, I would absolutely eat an eel pie, in fact I hope to one day. There’s still quite a few shops in London where you can get, apparently, a very good eel pie, traditionally served with mash. And this is also served with what’s called eel liquor, which is a sauce, it’s bright green, it’s flavoured with parsley, and you serve it with the pie like a gravy. So eel pie and mash and liquor

Liz

I mean, fish and parsley is a legitimate combination

Hazel

Oh yeah, it sounds nice, and I mean it looks quite nice as well. Yeah, so this became really popular in the 19th century, the Victorian era, so people who, like, couldn’t afford to have a shop, would be walking around with their, like, tray or their cart or whatever, selling eels

Liz

Were these still from the Thames at this point, because..?

Hazel

I believe some of them still were, but also a lot were being shipped over from places like the Netherlands as well because…

Liz

Yeah. I’m just thinking about the whole “the Thames was basically a big open sewer” thing

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

I’m not sure I’d want to eat those eels

Hazel

Apparently they were one of the very few fish that could survive in the Victorian Thames

Liz

That doesn’t mean you should eat them!

Hazel

That’s not exactly endearing it to me either. So, gradually, as the kinds of street food in the city started to get a bit more formalised, pie and mash shops started to open and the became, like, super popular, selling jellied eels as the classic, apparently selling live eels as well, in case you wanted to cook them at home, and they...a lot of them, there are pictures of some of the kind of early 20th century ones, and they have that kind of real, kind of, old-fashioned shop aesthetic, you know, the fancy hand-painted signs and big counters and stuff

Liz

Nice

Hazel

Yeah it looks quite cool, and you know that kind of, the tiled shop fronts that were popular in, like, late 19th century, early 20th century, yeah, it’s quite cool. So, there are several famous families in London that still run these pie and mash eel shops

Liz

Ooh, eel dynasties

Hazel

Eel dynasties. Yep. I think this is ripe for, like, a Peaky Blinders-style drama

Liz

Absolutely

Hazel

Set in the eel, the jellied eel business. So, the oldest apparently is Manzes, I’m not sure how I’m pronouncing it, but it’s Manze, founded by an immigrant from Italy in the 1870s, who apparently began selling pies after failing in the ice cream business, and he ended up with, like, a little eel empire, like he had a few pie shops around London

Liz

That’s beautiful, ‘cause ice cream’s like, the stereotype one, isn’t it

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

It’s like, you’re Italian, you move to Britain, you sell ice cream

Hazel

But not in London apparently. Not in the East End, you’re doing eels. So yeah, one of the shops is still open, oh no, hold on, there’s two open, sorry, I misread that. There’s one open in Peckham, and another one on Sutton High Street. The Peckham one is the original, apparently, so if you wanna give it a go, you can go there. In fact it’s still run by the family I believe, so

Liz

That’s awesome

Hazel

And in 1998 they opened their shop in Sutton, giving the family the chance to say that they ran the oldest and the newest pie and mash shops in London at the same time

Liz

That is beautiful and I’m happy for them

Hazel

It’s great. I guess it must still be true if they have...oh no I guess some more have opened since then, but they still have the oldest. There’s also the Cook pie shops, which was also a popular chain, and, yeah, quite a few other families that are still going, so these places really have, like, a dedicated clientele that will keep coming back, and I think it’s starting to become a bit of a thing, as well. I won’t say it’s the most popular thing for tourists in London, but I think it’s definitely something people like to try if they hear about it, and apparently they have become quite popular with people on, like, business lunches as well because it’s, like, a cheap lunch

Liz

Makes sense

Hazel

So yeah, a short history and modern day update on the jellied eel and eel pie situation. Let us know what you think, which one would you try? Which one would you go for?

Liz

I like that. “The eel situation”, sounds like an indie band

Hazel

Eel Situation. Yes. And they don’t come from the Thames any more at all really. Unfortunately the eel situation in terms of their population in the country is still not great, but I believe most of them still come from Europe

Liz

Cool

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

Well, thank you for listening, as we said, we do have a patreon, breadandthread, if you want to chuck us some pounds or dollars or whichever currency you use, and…

Hazel

But we’ll eat a jellied eel if you do it

Liz

And given when this episode goes up, happy holidays, whichever, if any, you’re celebrating

Hazel

Oh yeah, a merry midwinter solstice season to you all

Liz

So thank you for listening, and we will speak to you next time