[Sca-cooks] Metal Poisoning from the fork

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

The general story has probably been cited long before that. But does  
Henisch make the wider claim that Damian used a phrase like "God gave us two  
fingers, etc" - which is not in Damian's original at all?
 
It was that distortion I was tracing back, not Damian's account, which is  
an old one. Even if it was first printed in 1976, it would be a relatively  
recent invention (in food history terms).
 
 
As it is, I think this is an excellent illustration of how bogus ideas get  
about in food history. Someone probably paraphrased what they thought 
Damian  MEANT (he certainly doesn't say it) and at some point that paraphrase 
became a  quote (this is how an early twentieth century idea of Voltaire as 
someone who  would disagree with what someone said but defend to the death 
their right to say  it became an actual Voltaire "quote"). This (already ersatz) 
quote was then  misinterpreted to refer the Church's stance in general and 
the next thing you  know people are referring to a general prohibition of 
using anything but one's  hands to eat with (blithely ignoring the long use of 
knives and spoons).
 
Anywhere along the line this out-of-control train could have been stopped  
by simply going back to prime sources, but that unfortunately is more the  
exception than the rule in food history.
 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

Beyond Apicius (2):  recipes from other Roman sources
_http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/05/beyond-apicius-2-recipes-from-other.ht
ml_ 
(http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/04/beyond-wine-water-and-beer-what-else.html) 







In a message dated 5/11/2014 8:02:52 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
johnnae at mac.com writes:

If you  search under "peter damian on forks" in google books, you will find 
mentions  in the Oxford Symposium papers "Authenticity in the Kitchen" and 
probably for  our purposes more importantly it's in Henisch's 1976 volume 
Fast and Feast.  Many of us have owned that volume since its first publication.

That  predates the date of 1987 cited  earlier.