[Sca-cooks] Metal Poisoning from the fork

[Susan Lord Williams]

Johnna Holloway wrote:

> 
> Clifford Wright on the topic
> 
> http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/topic_id/8/id/108/

Marvellous - one of Wright’s most interesting articles. Unfortuantely, I do not have any of the books cited and do not have access to them right now but at least he has citations!

Johnnna continues:
> 
> 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.

I have a photocioy of the 1976 publication but unfortunately in my haste to photocopy it, I am missing very important pages. Perhaps those who do have this copy can fill in my blanks:
Henisch (1976), p 185 concerning the fork: “ . . . to fish meat out of a cauldron. . . .a tool with a long reach.” Here she cites the Old Testament 1Sam. 2:13.14 but that does not concern the use of the fork at the dinner table.

As for the use of the table fork she appears to believe that it came from elegant Byzantine rather than Rome.  .  . She goes on to relate the use of fork story in a wedding which she says occurred in the 11th century in Venice when a Byzantine princess married the furture Doge, Domenico Selvo.


My copies of pgs 186-187 are missing.


Again missing is the bibliography but the note seem to reflect that the primary source is “Cookery Books” – without the bibliography I cannot tell to which ones she is referring.  

We are getting away from the theory that the Church prohibited using metal instruments to convey organic food to the mouth. How and why did priests come to interpret a Biblical passage as meaning the fork was prohibited?

Further, I think this topic should be divided into four:
Metal Poisoning from the fork
Metal Poisonoing from wine goblets
Metal Poisioning from wine
Metal Poisoning from aqueducts.