venta

Wikipedia is with you on the three-tined thing. Sadly, I'm not. I maintain that three tines is into cake fork territory and fish forks should have four. Very few people seem to agree, though.

My current household has no fishforks (as far as I'm aware) and I can't say I've felt the lack. My parents house has four-tined fish forks, with a strange bobbly hole between the middle pair.

The bobbly hole has always been what I considered defining, but there's very little evidence that this is even widespread, never mind required. This (http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.questodesign.com/shop/images/kitchen/alessi/dry/dry_fish_knife_fork_m.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.questodesign.com/shop/proddetail.php%3Fprod%3Dalessi_4180%252F17&h=240&w=240&sz=7&hl=en&start=48&tbnid=kA88wt-eOFRIJM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522fish%2Bfork%2522%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DN) is a rather exaggerated version of what I mean.

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al-fruitbat.livejournal.com

I can't remember where I read it, but I was informed fish knives are ludicrously middle-class, serving no useful function at all? I read that once, and felt angry for a while (there were fish forks in the house I grew up in) but the explanation does make sense.

You may need a seperate knife to eat fish - the knife should be straight, bendy and suitable for lifting and cutting as well as removing skin and bone.

You do not need a seperate fork, and unless you've got antique silver tableware where each set comes with a different motif, you've got no excuse for putting one on the table.

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I have read that silver cutlery can pick up the smell of fish, and therefore a separate set of forks was also deemed necessary. I don't know if this is true, though, and even before the advent of stainless steel I suspect it was more about snobbery than utility.

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ringbark.livejournal.com

Fish cutlery is fancy and baroque, while meat cutlery is plainer.
(Often, ordinary cutlery is kept in the drawer, while fish cutlery is in a velvet box, only opened on rare occasions: when we (a) have fish to eat (b) remember and can be bothered to get the fish cutlery out)

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It generally has a wee waist in the 'bowl' part. Goodness knows why, maybe to trap bones. And it's usually smaller than a real fork.

(I was going to say that the leftmost tine was widened into a sort of blade, but actually I now think that is more of a dessert fork characteristic.)

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It generally has a wee waist in the 'bowl' part

Could you explain that again for the stupid ? I thought I'd understood, but the trapping bones part doesn't make much sense, so now I fear I haven't.

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By the bowl part I mean the flattish segment which has the handle at one end and the tines at the other. In a fish fork I think this usually has a notch on either side about halfway along. I speculated they might be for catching bones because on a sword you sometimes have similar notches for catching the opponent's sword, so it can't just slide smoothly along your edge -- so the fish fork notches might maybe prevent bones springing up the saide of the fork and hitting you in the eye. But this was mostly a facetious suggestion.

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But this was mostly a facetious suggestion.

I feel betrayed and let down :)

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I was going to say that the leftmost tine was widened into a sort of blade

A runcible spoon!

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Mm, no, that's more like a spork for me, ie. it's basically a spoon with tines cut into it. A dessert fork is a fork with one tine broadened, but it's not otherwise bowl-like.

But this could all be completely wrong. Hopefully

venta will enlighten us as to fork taxonomy shortly.

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Hopefully venta will enlighten us as to fork taxonomy shortly.

Sadly, no. Venta wants to know, and found the interweb rather unsatisfactory as a source, and that's why she's asking.

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Nope.

In my parents house, there are some strange brown, translucent plastic spoons which I believe were actually Mothercare's best baby-feeding equipment at a time when I merited such things. They now, on account of their tolerance for EPNS-rotting vinegar, get used for pickles.

For as long as I can remember I have been firmly convinced that that is what was meant by a runcible spoon.

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Feel free to be as convince - and wrong - as you like.

While in defiance of its origins, a runcible spoon does in fact have three broad tines, one of which (an outside one, one presumes) has a slightly sharpened edge.

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We had a similar tradition: only it was a fluted silver spoon with an almost-circular bowl, whose origins were lost in the midst of time, that to us defined runcibility.

On which subject, what makes a runcible hat, as allegedly worn by Lear himself?

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ewx.livejournal.com

Can be held using just fins.

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bateleur.livejournal.com

Mental image is of a lightweight fork with longer and possibly fewer tines than a normal fork.

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Fish forks have 4 slender tines and a waist. They go together with fish knives which have fairly flat blades and a banana-curved aspect, which is meant to help get the skin and any bones separate from the fish. These knives tend to have fancy carvings on said blade. Mayhap the fork is just supposed to match the knife?

I s'pose if one is ever likely to serve up a full-course dinner, then it would be nice to have different cutlery for different courses...

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Fish forks have 4 slender tines and a waist.

Thank goodness someone agrees with me. What is all this speaking of three tines and a broad bit - that's a cake fork!

Unless... you don't think Darlington has different fish forks to the rest of the world, do you ?

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The only fish cutlery I've ever handled IRL belonged to my Grandma, and she was Scottish, so... Maybe we are looking at Darlo and Scotland having weird fish forkage...

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For veritably hours of cutlery-related fun and astonishment, try here (http://www.replacements.com/piecetype/flat_piece.htm). The first page is relatively sensible, but it rapidly spirals into ludicrous and the descriptions are great.

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cuthbertcross.livejournal.com

You get a mummy fish, and a daddy fish, and they love each other very much. Then the daddy fish gives the mummy fish a special hug....

Oh. Fork. Sorry. Forget I said anything...

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As far as I know, the key thing about a fish fork is that it matches a fish knife.

As

al_fruitbat suggests, the fish knife is indeed one of the middle-classiest things you can get. You see, a fish knife is blunt, because you're not supposed to cut fish; if it's properly cooked, it will come apart naturally in flakes, something that of course the gentry have always known. But when the poor, old, nouveaux riche started going to restaurants when such things were new, they didn't. So fish knives were introduced to stop them upsetting the sensibilities of the proper customers with their zany fish-cutting antics.

With regards any of the other specific properties of the fish fork, dunno. They're often broader tined than regular stabbin' forks, and often (but not always) have three tines (maybe both of these things are simply to help it match the broad-bladed knife). Oh, and they often have an indentation in the... erm... the bit immediately behind the tines, and before the handle.

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Hmm. Y'see, as I understand it the broad-tine thingy on a cake fork is so it can be used in a slightly knife-like way to cut off bits of cake. So, if fish should not be cut, why would the fork have a broad tine ?

I grew up with four-tined fishforks, and am confused at this co-option of things I consider to be cakeforks for piscean purposes.

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I think it's because, as I suggested on my opening comments to the floor, the only key quality of a fish fork is that it match the fish knife.

So various bods have designed them in various ways, some of which resemble cake forks in an effort to make them not look like normal forks.

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j4.livejournal.com

Funny shape. Thin edge, for going in edgeways.

Oh, hang on, that's a fish-slice. A friend of mine was basically incapable of saying "get a word in edgeways" without following it with "like a fish-slice".

Fish-forks are more for phrases like "bugger me sideways with a fish-fork", suggesting that they don't go in easily edgeways, though frankly I think any cutlery would be poorly suited to that sort of usage.

Owen and I were talking just the other day about incredibly specific kitchen-implements: melon-ballers, egg-slicers, teabag-squeezers, pastry-brushes, that kind of thing. When I helped to count my College's silver (!) I discovered that they had more than one pair of asparagus-tongs. I had to completely recalibrate my ideas of poshness!

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feanelwa.livejournal.com

Well presumably if it's a college they give asparagus to a lot of people at once, and if one person's doing all the tongings it'd take all day.

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A friend of mine was basically incapable of saying "get a word in edgeways" without following it with "like a fish-slice".

That just shows how terribly well-educated your friend is. I too say that. In fact, in my family the way to get people to be quiet if you have something important to say and can't get a word in is to shout "fishslice".

What are asparagus tongs, anyway ? How do they differ from other tongs ? Even this website (http://www.replacements.com/piecetype/flat_piece.htm), which provides ten pages of increasingly bizarre specialist cutlery doesn't mention them.

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What a great site! "Cream soup spoons are smaller than a gumbo spoon and larger than a bouillon spoon. Generally, these spoons have round shallow bowls." And that's just on the first page.

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beckyc.livejournal.com

A fish fork (and knife?) are shaped such that they are of no earthly use to anyone wanting to use them for anything else.

When an elderly relative of mine died a few years ago, my aunt, when selecting something from the estate for each of us as a keepsake saw fit to give me (then the only vegetarian in the family, although now there are more) a set of silver fish cutlery. I have never used them, and I presume they are somewhere in my parents' house.

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ar-gemlad.livejournal.com

The side prong is wide and has a notch in it. Or is that a dessert fork? Can you have fish for dessert?

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I think that's a dessert fork. Most other people don't seem to.

Unlike fish forks, cake forks are great. Mostly because if someone gives you a cake fork, it usually means they're about to give you a cake too gooey to be eaten with fingers alone. So they are harbingers of happy cakey times, and thus a Good Thing.

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feanelwa.livejournal.com

It's wooden and comes out of a box patterned with fake newspaper print.

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feanelwa.livejournal.com

I ought to point out I posted this and *then* I read the comments.

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This wasn't what I meant, but it's a perfectly reasonable answer. I suspect I've probably eaten fish with one of those wooden two-pronged affairs rather more often than with an official silver fish fork.

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floralaetifica.livejournal.com

It's ability to snap at a moment's notice.

Oh, you mean... Hm, had never thought about the possibility of fish forks, only knives. Hence my immediate assumption that you were talking about the wooden/plastic chip shop variety.

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dr-bob.livejournal.com

It's like a fork (table cutlery) only one of the tines on the edge is broader.

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Okay, okay, I give up!

Why do you want to know this?

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Same as ever. Idle curiosity.

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Fairy nuff.

But why, really?! ;p

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lathany.livejournal.com

I want to know what you, yourself, with your own mind think constitutes a fish fork.

It is the bringer of dark suspicions about what the starter might be.

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Dark suspicions ? Surely you mean 'happy anticipations' ?

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narenek.livejournal.com

Made of silver or at the very least silver plated and quite delicate.

IIRC boring old steel (not stainless steel) would react badly with somethingorother in the fish and go black and make the fish taste bad, so you made them out of silver so they wouldn't react.

Partly because of this fish forks also tend to be small and delicate (fish generally not needing highly robust cutlery and silver being expensive).

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