The Perfect Gentleman Issue 2 - April 2016 | Page 21

Mannered Gentleman

Basic Table Manners
by Ruairidh Bulger
The basic premise of table manners is to
separate, with ritual, cooking techniques and
implements, the modern dining experience
from the dining experience of animals and
barbarians. The basic implements that we use
in Western dining have slowly evolved from
the basic items of necessity, to more refined
versions, but their basic natures haven't
changed significantly.
The first of the implements to evolve was the
knife. As a vital tool for survival, combat, food
preparation and construction, the knife was the
tool from which all other tools came. Stones,
chipped and sharpened to an edge were the
original tools for cutting meat off a carcass,
either eating the flesh raw, or a basic roasting
over a fire. Sharpened stones have been found
dating back as far as five hundred thousand
years B.C.E.

As the ability to make ever hotter fires allowed
the melting of initially soft, then ever harder
metals, to form knives, then spears, swords and
arrowheads. Double bladed knives became the
standard eating utensil, until Cardinal
Richelieu slowly started to influence King
Louis XIV in the 1630s to ban the use of sharp
double balded knives not only at the dinner
table, but across the whole of France. The
replacement of these sharp knives with the
blunter edged ones that we are more familiar
with quickly spread across the whole of
Europe.
Spoons evolved almost as early as the knives,
with the use of hollowed out pieces of wood, or
sea shells attached to wooden sticks. At this
time, hollowed out animal horns were also
used to eat liquid foods.

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