Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

[venta]

Can anyone tell me what they consider to be the defining characteristic (if any) of a fish fork ?

Incidentally, I too can use google. I want to know what you, yourself, with your own mind think constitutes a fish fork.

Comments

[taimatsu]

It's a small fork with three (not four) fairly broad tines.

(If only one is broad, it may be a dessert fork, though these usually have four tines.)

[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.

My perception

[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)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

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.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Can be held using just fins.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

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

[marjory.livejournal.com]

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...

[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...

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

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.

[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!

[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.

[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?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

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

[marjory.livejournal.com]

Okay, okay, I give up!

Why do you want to know this?

[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.

[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).

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

One of them short two-pronged wooden thingies. No wait, that's a chip-fork. Pass.

[(Anonymous)]

"Phone for the fish knives, Norman..." Fish forks are four-tined, slightly more elaborate than the other forks in the canteen of cutlery, and with matching knives with a flat, wide and generally fancy-shaped blade with a pattern and you own them because, if you are late middle-aged like me, you had a canteen of cutlery, 80 or so pieces including butterknife and jam spoon, in a mahogany case when you got married.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Liz!

I was sufficiently moved by this very profound discussion to create my conception of a fish fork for you. However, you will need to visit my blog to view this cutleric item, since I can post a comment to your brainchild, but, sadly, not an image.

Now, better get on with some proper illustration ...

Cathy xxx

[(Anonymous)]

Fish forks and knives are used for fish as it can be tasted (by some - so I'm told) on the cutlery afterwards even once washed.

I use the same cutlery for everything myself ... but the abve is what I've been told ... ;)