[Sca-cooks] Fourteenth century Norman fork
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Sat Jan 19 12:39:05 PST 2013
Jim Chevallier wrote:
>I imagine most people here know that table forks weren't used (in
>France at least) until well after the medieval period; some may have
>been used in kitchens.
>This document (from persee.fr) on domestic objects and arms from
>Normandy made of iron is interesting overall; among other things it
>includes an image of a fourteenth century fork (on page 214):
>Corpus des objets domestiques et des armes en fer de Normandie. Du
Ier >au XVe si?cle Patrick Halbout , Christian Pilet , Catherine
Vaudour >Cahier des Annales de Normandie Year 1986 Volume
20 >Issue 20 pp. 1-255
>http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/annor_0570-1600_1986_
>hos_20_1_4129?_Prescripts_Search_tabs1=standard&
From what I can make out of the French, they're calling this a "fork of
the table". Leaving out the diacritical marks, the text says: "Les
fourchettes de table sont connues pour etre des objects de curiosite au
moyen age, e l'on y recontre des fourchettes a pot, de grande taille,
dont le manche se termine en crochet our en oeilleton. Les deus cas
illustres par Blangy ne s'inscrivent dans aucune serie bien connue (no
858, et une autre 'miniscule fourchette en cuivre a laquelle nous n'avon
pu attribuer de destination', pl. 80, fig. 4 et p.55).
Certainly, cooking forks were known. I wonder if this smaller fork
might have been used in the dining hall to hold down pieces of meat
while they were being carved. I don't see any comments that this fork
was used to convey food to the mouth by individual diners.
Alys K.
--
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://damealys.medievalcookery.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/
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