February 5, 2020 • 33 mins
This everyday utensil is a relative newcomer to the table -- eating with a fork was considered scandalous and even sinful for centuries. Anney and Lauren trace the history and potential future of the fork (aka the dinglehopper).
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to save our protection of I Heart
radio and stuff media. I'm Annies and I'm Lauren Folk BAM,
and today we have a classic episode for you about forks. Yes,
and it has sort of a hilarious reason why we
chose it. Uh yeah, because a couple of weeks ago, Um,
Annie and I were doing the thing where every every
(00:29):
just about every recording session, after we finish our episodes,
we stay in the studio for another like ten or
fifteen minutes and talk about what our next topics should be. UM,
and a couple of weeks ago, Annie very excitedly was like,
what about forks? And I was like, oh, man, I
bet there's some wild stuff about forks, And so I
like google forks and like look at all these lists
(00:51):
of all the different kinds of forks there are. And
we were like, yeah, we're totally going to do an
episode about forks. And then like three days later, I
was like, dude, we definitely did forks like two years ago.
Both of us had forgotten about it completely. Yeah, and
uh I, I it's funny. I really remember sports. I
(01:13):
remember that episode. And I was telling Lauren because I
was trying to remember what specific reason why I wanted
to talk about it, and I think it was a
culmination of I had just been to Disney World and
of course the Little Mermaid ride with the fork and
then I mean the Dingle Hopper. Oh excuse me, Yes,
what a slip um. But also I'm somebody who, as
(01:35):
listeners of the show probably know, I love a good
pun and I love a good title. Oh that was it,
and I think I was just very excited about the
pun possibilities with fork. Yeah, um, we should see if
we still have the email where I wrote all the
titles for it. What? Okay? What the Fork is? What
(01:59):
you wanted to call this one? Yes? Yes, but I
mean there's a plethora. There's like fork in the road.
There's so many ways you could go with that. Obviously
what the Fork? There are many other variety of variations
on that one. Maybe I'm just gonna go and do that.
I think I have to get it out of my
system and uh, maybe we'll post it somewhere. There you go.
(02:20):
My process, my terrible, terrible process. Uh. And when I
was do we before we do these classics, we look
to see if there's been any news updates and everything
I got apart from fork the place, which is the
place that exists in Utah and Washington. I believes for
(02:41):
Washington there's a fork Utah, I think. But I got
a bunch of stuff about bitcoin forks, and I read
it and I don't understand it. So there's that. Well, cool,
that's that exists. Good good news update. Yeah, yeah, if
you're curious, that's all. Well, if you're curious, you pro
you already know about it. But I didn't know. It
(03:02):
was news to me. I know very little about bitcoins.
I'm not afraid to say. Yes, that is not our
wheelhouse on this food show, not on this food show.
But forks you have, they're fascinating, they have a fascinating history. Yeah,
listening back to this episode was was pretty great. Um,
so yeah, we are going to let former Indian Lauren
(03:22):
take it away. Hello, and welcome to food Stuff on
Lauren Vocabam and I'm Annie Reese, and today we're going
to talk about the fork. Yeah, we've already done a
(03:43):
sport episode and and Aunt Lauren mentioned that she'd run
across some kind of scandalous history of the fork. Yeah
they didn't catch on for quite a while, but okay, Yeah,
let's let's get right into it. Fork. What is it? Well,
I guess we can describe it. It's a pronged utensil
used for spearing foods. Stick with points there if you will.
(04:06):
But there are a lot of variations on them. You've
got fruit fork, salad fork, dessert fork, fish for deli fork,
snail fork, serving fork, roast fork, asparagus fork, cheese for chip, fork,
crab fork, olive fork orstra fork, pastry fork, pickle fork,
pie fork, relish work, stuck at fork, t fork, tarrapin fort,
toasting fork, spaghetti fork. Oh, this isn't evil all the forks.
(04:26):
There's more and I had to cut down there. You're
slacking on your fork wrap here. I know, Annie, I
could have gone on for probably like four more lines.
That's that's going to be in our deep cut of
this episode. Yes, the b side. The name comes from
the Latin word for pitchfork, for which was borrowed by
(04:50):
Germanic languages as well. I think in A Little Mermaid
it was the dingle hopper. Yeah, oh, the dingle hopper.
A Little Mermaid throwback and histories how some strong emotions
about the fork take this nineteen sixties poem from Charles Simmock.
This strange thing must have crept right out of hell.
(05:11):
It resembles a bird's foot worn around the cannibal's neck.
As you hold it in your hand, as you stab
with it into a piece of meat, it is possible
to imagine the rest of the bird it's head, which,
like your fist, is large, bald, beakless and blind. Oh yeah,
(05:31):
I should have done that in slam poetry style. Oh well,
okay next time. That whole spike with points thing is
the crux, if you will, of fork technology, and it's
what developed very slowly over time, like okay, slight tangent.
Do you all remember any of the parody razor commercials
(05:53):
that happened over the past couple decades. Started in the
nineteen seventies when a Saturday Night Live, in response to
a new double bladed razor, did a parody about a
three bladed razor. Ah, it was all lolls until that
actually happened in the nineteen nineties, invoking further parodies. An
Onion article in two thousand four titled everything We're doing
five blades, which happened a year later. Um and then
(06:16):
SNL and Mad TV responded with like fourteen and twenty
blade razors, which have, for the good of all of
us not come to fruition. And look, this is a
long tangent, but this is also definitely how forks have happened. Yes,
it's a very slow progression, very slow and kind of hilarious.
And we're going to get to that just as soon
(06:36):
as we take a quick break for word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So
the precursor to the fork is the simple cooking spike
used to spear, roast and lift food, but it would
(06:59):
be thousands of years before a second spike developed, and
the single spike implement would last into the Middle Ages.
You're making this sound very epic. I'm trying. It's a fork. No,
you're succeeding. In the world of cutlery. The fork in
its modern form is one of the newest eating implements
on the block. More primitive two pronged versions used mainly
(07:21):
for cooking and serving, go way back to ancient times,
though uh, these were larger than the kitchen forks we
have these days to accommodate you know, fire, as opposed
to just a pan um they were based on pitchforks
and probably not very much smaller, which is kind of
hilarious to imagine people trying to eat with these things.
Oh yeah, that's why they didn't. That's why they didn't.
(07:42):
Never mind, they're like, this is a bad idea at
the table. People would rather use spoons, are their fingers
or knives. People had a knife or small dagg around
hand most of the time, and that was the most
all purpose bit of cutlery for both slicing and conveying
food to your mouth or other bits of food like bread. Yeah. Yeah.
(08:04):
Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were some of the first
to use table forks, and archaeologists unearthed forks made out
of bone belonging to China's Kijah culture from nine hundred BC.
Persian nobility may have used something resembling the fork during
the eighth and ninth century, and by the eleventh century
forks were being used by the Byzantine Empire, but they
(08:27):
were probably for the most part absent and regarded with
suspicion by much of Europe, probably because it's resemblance to
the pitchfork, which made people think of the devil they
were super fancy forks, though like like we gilded sweetmeat
forks have survived, Which brings us to the wedding of
a Byzantine princess to Italian does Dominico Salvo set in
(08:50):
Venice and one thousand four CE. The princess caused a
bit of a scandal, or perhaps a minor scandal, when
at the wedding east she whipped out a golden four Yeah.
The clergy roundly condemned this as a sinful show of decadence.
She also brought the napkin and finger bowl two which
(09:14):
that's pretty that's a little over the top. According to
the time manuscript from that time, written and illustrated by St.
Peter Domain Read, such was the luxury of her habits
that she deigned not to touch her food with her fingers,
but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into
small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden
(09:35):
instrument with two prongs, and thus carried to her mouth.
God and his wisdom has provided man with natural forks
his fingers. They were serious about this, like there was
like they did not forget. There was a follow up
right after her death from the plague a few years
later Domain claimed it was God's punishment for her lavishness, writing,
(09:58):
this woman's vanity was hateful to Almighty God, and so
unmistakably did he take his revenge. For he raised over
her the sword of his divine justice, so that her
whole body did putrefy in all her limbs begin to wither.
For using a fork for that, I just my brain
(10:21):
just ran out of words. It's a different time, different
different dra Well. After that, inventory documents and wills show
that the fork slowly spread through Europe. In the case
of Will's largely suck at forks used for eating candied
syrupy fruit. Still middle age folks WI generally ate off
(10:45):
stale realms of bread called trencher, sort of scooping. Yeah. Yeah.
In the fourteen hundreds, forks started appearing in Italian cookbooks,
which brings us to her second marriage and wedding of
the episode that the second wedding scandal, I know to
wedding scandals. In one episode, in her fifty three wedding
to King Henry the Second, Catherine de Medici brought with
(11:08):
her silver forks and my gold and silver from Italy
to France. There was much laughter as members of the
court got food all over themselves and their attempts to
use this new fangled eating device. De Medici was a
trend setter, and all things Italian were fashionable thanks to
the Renaissance. Catherine went on a tour of sorts during
the fifteen sixties, appearing at huge public festivals to demonstrate
(11:32):
the monarchy's power, wherein onlookers would watch she ate with forks.
Two types of forks were the norm at the time,
hefty two pronged things used mainly for meat, and small,
dainty ones used for desserts. But there was still resistance
flock resistance, yes, still going strong. In sixteen o five,
(11:53):
an allegorical novel about Henry the Third's courtiers penned anonymously,
featured an island inhabited by these over the top hermaphrodites
that ate with forks. Feminine, defensive, no not caring that
they were spilling more food than they were consuming in
(12:14):
their exit, just deplorable. During the time of Henry the Third,
forks were still used mostly by the well off, who
would travel with these fancied cases of silverware. Uh and,
according to Caroline Young's essay Feeding Desire, the fort came
with unset tilling me. I had trouble saying that, so
I had to practice of feminine aura until until about
(12:37):
that time British sailors turned down eating with what they
perceived to be unmanly forks. No way, a real man
don't eat with folks. They don't eat with forks. Learning
a lot. An English traveler named Thomas Coryate traveled across
continental Europe and wrote about his observations in sixteen eight
(13:00):
in crew Detas Hastily gobbled up in five months or
creates crew Detas Great titles both yes. He explained how
how the Italians did this mysterious thing in which they
used a fork and a knife to cut and eat
(13:20):
their food, and then kind of summed up by saying, uh,
the reason of this their curiosity is because the Italian
cannot buy any means endure to have his dish touched
with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike clean. Hereupon,
I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by
this forked cutting of meat, not only while I was
in Italy, but also in Germany and oftentimes in England.
(13:43):
Since I came home and after this published creates. Friends
called him first of her, first of her. At the time,
this meant both fork bearer and man doomed to hang
pretty good nickname yeah. As ideas about hygiene change, the
fort grew in popularity, now with three and sometimes four
(14:06):
times with a slight curve, which made it more functional
as well. Flatware around this time, especially for the non
royal but stillwell off, was widespread lee a part of
one's personal tool set. Even relatively common common folks what
would carry their own case with a knife, fork, and
spoon for use at home, when they were guests in
(14:28):
other people's homes and when they were traveling about, and
because they were these mobile devices. The development of that
flared shape of the handles and also of of the
curvature of the fork was partially to help keep the
business ends of everything in check when they were all
bundled up in your pocket or pack. Mhmm. Charles the
(14:48):
First declared in sixty three it is decent to use
the fork, but it was still mostly only utilized by
the upper class. King Louis the fourteenth told his childre
and however, to ignore the instructions of their tutor and
stay away from those forks. Yeah. In seventeen sixty of
(15:09):
French Aristocrat described a fancy dinner party in Turkey, making
jibes at their lack of experience with the fork. Quote.
I saw one woman throughout the dinner taking olives with
her fingers and then impaling them on her fork in
order to eat them in the French manner. No, that's
not how that works. No, no, and I can't. I mean,
I've done similar things. We'll share, but you know, right
(15:33):
this was This was also just a wee bet. After
well appointed homes began including whole specific rooms bent just
for dining and multiple sets of silverware for when guests
came over multiple sets. What with industrialization, more commoners began
using the fork. King Louis the thirteenth Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu,
(15:54):
who found the practice of frequent guests to use to
clean his teeth with his knife extremely almost so dangerous. Yeah,
so gross. The Cardinal had the tips of the guest
knives ground down. The court emulated the practice, eager to
copy royalty, and in six nine Francis King Louis declared
(16:16):
that pointed knives at the dinner table and on the
street were legal. Yeah, Following this decree, existing knives were
rounded down and new knives were made with rounded tips,
and this brings is to kind of an interesting difference
in eating habits. Yeah Um. At the beginning of the
seventeenth century, forks were still not typical of the American household,
(16:40):
where they would instead use the new blunt tipped imported
knives to cut while studying the food they were slicing
into with a spoon in their left or non dominant hand. Um.
The diner would then have to switch hands so that
the food could be scooped up and eaten with a spoon,
and this practice led to the z zag method Americans
(17:01):
still used to this day. More on that a little
bit later. One American diner wrote of the fork in
the eighteen hundreds, eating peas with the fork is as
bad as trying to eat soup with a knitting needle,
And in eighteen forty two, Charles Dickens noted of people
on a Pennsylvania river boat, they thrust their broad bladed
knives and two pronged forks further down their throats than
(17:22):
I ever saw the same weapons go before, except in
the hands of a skilled juggler. Wow It's suggested in
the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink that American reluctance
to adopt forks traces to Puritan ideals from the Pilgrim's
original colonies. At the time, the new fangled and often
upper class used to forks would have represented everything that
(17:45):
they were turning away from. And that's why it took
so long to catch on over here. That's true. I
never really thought about that. Yeah, despite resistance, the fork
had made it by finally made it to the big time,
and by eighteen in America. In by eighties seven etiquette
(18:06):
books included best practices for not embarrassing yourself with a fork.
Here's an excerpt from an eighteen eighties seven book on manners.
The fork has now become the favorite and fashionable utensil
for conveying food to the mouth. First it crowded out
the knife, and now in its pride, it has invaded
the domain of the once powerful spoon. The spoon is
(18:27):
now pretty well subdued also, and the fork, insolent and triumphant,
has become a sumptuary tyrant. The true devotee of fashion
does not dare to use a spoon, except to stir
his tea or to eat his soup with and meekly
eats his ice cream with a fork and pretends to
like it. They were seriously ice cream forks, though I
(18:48):
mean like like fancy tables at the time might have
had an ice cream fork. And additionally, you know, it's
like status symbols oyster forks, salad forks, lettuce forks, melon forks,
strawberry forks, sandwich forks, and bread forks. By the turn
of the twentieth century, the fashionable advice was to never
use a knife or spoon when a fork will do these.
(19:11):
It's intense. This is also the time around about here
that we hit peak times five times, six tied, and yes,
even seven timed. Forks appeared generally as serving forks, not
eating forks, and the ones with the most times were
apparently startine forks or bacon forks. If you've never seen
(19:31):
a picture of a seven tied fork, go now. I'm
resistingly urged. It's it's beautiful in its ridiculousness. Um and
materials technology wound up having a lot to do with
the spread of forks. Up until the seventeen hundreds. You
wanted good quality forks to be made of silver, because silver,
(19:52):
unlike many other metals, will not react with acidic foods
and uh kind of ruin the taste. But silver, of
course is expensive. When silver plaining, therefore, was invented around
the seventeen hundreds, it allowed what would soon become an
expanding middle class of Europeans access to a fancy flatwear.
And beginning in the nineteen hundreds, you get so many more,
(20:15):
even more types of forks, from bake light forks in
the nineteen forties to the bright neon ones of the
nineteen eighties. Oh yeah, plastic plastic makes possible. And comparisons
to chopsticks have pretty much existed since the forecast and
are more modern time. And here's one written written comparison
(20:35):
by Roland Bars in the nineteen seventies. By chopsticks, food
becomes no longer prey to which one does violence, meat
flesh over which one does battle, but as substance harmoniously transferred.
They transformed the previously divided substance into bird food and
rice into a flow of milk maternal. They tirelessly performed
(20:56):
the gesture which creates the mouthful, leaving to our element
Harry Manners armed with pikes and knives. That a fredation. Yeah,
so kind of more nonsense. Um, people have a lot
to say about forks. They really do, they really do.
I guess we're talking about them, so I, yeah, we
just did. We're doing a whole episode. We're not even
(21:18):
over yet, nope. Yeah, but we are going to take
a one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Okay, so some kind
of science e things about the fork. Yes, science and
(21:40):
future forks, future forks, starting with the smelly fork. The
smelly fork. Don't you want it so badly? No? I
want my fork? Okay. I thought I wanted my forks
to be neutral? Am I wrong? Annie? You M no,
probably not, but this does. I am intrigued by this.
So it's not really called the smell fork. It's called
(22:01):
the Aroma Revolution Kit. And it's this kit that comes
with four forks and twenty one cent vials things like
with sabby and passion fruit, and you put a drop
of the desired scent on a paper tab that you
then insert at the base of the fork, and then
if all goes according to plan, the scent will influence
(22:23):
the food you're actually eating with the fork, So maybe
tricking your brain with a scent of butter rather than
actual butter, like you smell it. Okay, sure, I mean
smell has a lot to do with taste. It certainly does.
In the article I was reading, they said like they
would put with saby the scent of the sabi and
(22:44):
then eat chocolate off the fork, and it would be
interesting combinations. A long way Togo. But you know, I mean,
I would just put some sabby and some chocolate if
I wanted to. But I mean, but but no, that's
that's fascinating. It is another fascinating fork, the smart fork
versus smelly folk, now the smart folk. At the yearly
(23:04):
Tech convention c E s In, a company released a
fork that will monitor how many bites you take and
your rate of food intake. I'm not sure that's information
I want to know. If you ate too fast, it
would vibrate the way that your phone does when you
get a text message to tell you to slow down.
The idea here being that if you eat more slowly
um allowing feedback from your stomach to go on and
(23:26):
reach your brain, you'll consume less overall. It's a weight
loss tool, and because it provided that vibration, which in
the industry is called haptic feedback because it relates to
your sense of touch, it was called the happy fork.
Well yeah, which is pretty good. Also, yeah, pretty good fun.
It's still on the market, but I'm not sure how
(23:47):
popular it's ever gotten. I could use some reminders to
slow down when I'm eating. I don't know, I've got
other stuff to do. Sometimes, sometimes I want to enjoy it.
Sometimes I'm just like, there's a difference between eating quickly
and eating like you're a starving animal, which is what
I frequently find myself doing it. And I'm not sure
(24:08):
why why am I acting like I have no time
to eat? Ever? Again? Anyway, enough about my eating habits
and the work I might need to do to improve them. Um,
something that I frequently need reminders about our table etiquette. Yeah,
I like never went through like tillion or anything like that,
so I'm basically a mess at a table. Um I
wanted to feel really bad, Yeah, but so okay. So
(24:31):
there are actually two schools of fork etiquette. Of course,
as we mentioned earlier, the American style is the zig
zag kind of thing. Um. But but first, the the okay. So,
so the European style, in the Continental tradition that developed
during the eighteen hundreds, it's considered a proper etiquette to
hold your fork in your non dominant hand times down okay,
(24:53):
and the way the way that you should hold it
here you okay, you hold the base of the forks
handle at the base of your palm, your thumb and
finger grip the stem of the fork, and then you
stabilize the neck of the fork with your index finger. Okay, okay,
all right, try this with a pen if you're at home,
(25:14):
or if you have a fork, that's even better. Um
that that the fork, though, stays in that position, and
the knife in your dominant hand is used to both
cut food and to kind of push it gently onto
the downward times of the fork. Okay, okay. Properly speaking,
you would set the knife down when you're not actively
using it, but some places, especially the English, dude just
(25:35):
kind of hold onto it the whole time. Oh man, Yeah,
I feel like I'm going to be tested on this later.
Oh yeah, We're we're about to take a field ture.
I'm totally gonna see if I can put this. Put
this to you, um in this tradition. In the European
continental side, it's generally considered very crashed to actually put
any part of the fork except maybe maybe the very
(25:58):
tips of the times into your mouth. Really yeah, So
that's why Charles Dickens is all totally yeah. Yeah. If
you're dealing with food that would require putting the silverware
in your mouth, it's better to uh to use the
fork or your knife to push that food into your spoon,
which is okay to touch your lips as long as
(26:18):
you do it from the side of the spoon, not
the tip. Okay. So American style okay, um, this is
basically old fashioned European style, but is still considered proper
here in America. To um okay, to uh to use
your knife with your dominant hand, with your fork helping
stabilize the food with your non dominant hand. And then
(26:39):
once you've cut a piece of food, you put down
the knife entirely, switch the fork to your dominant hand
for eating, all right, And you hold this fork times up,
not times down, not never times down. Maybe I don't know,
I don't know your life, um, but but yeah, and
you hold it more like you would hold a hold
a pen. So the so that the base of the
(27:01):
handle rests on kind of the the meaty bit of
your hand between the thumb and index finger. Um. The
neck of the fork is supported in between your index
and middle finger. Yeah, and uh, and then your thumb
can balance pressure on the stem of the fork. So right. Yeah.
So it's sort of like a like a like a
(27:22):
scoopy things, and it's okay to scoop foods that require scooping,
like peas, say, into the curved tinines of your fork,
and to use it like a spoon. In her book
The Rituals of Dinner from Margaret Vizier, says of this
denying a modern fork, it's possible. Spoonlike use is wantonly perverse,
wantonly won. So there you go. I hope, I hope
(27:45):
that made some kind of it's hard to describe visual things.
I wish we had been filming it because Laura and
I were both acting like caveman trying to learn for
the first time with with my terrible claw hands. I
felt very Zoidberg in the middle of all of that.
I was just like, what is it doing? What? What
are these hand things? I don't understand. I feel like
(28:05):
next time I eat. I'm going to pay so much
attention to what I'm doing with my hands that I'm
going to get confused. Yeah, I have to say I can't.
Being an American, not switching hands is very difficult for
me to to manage. Yeah. Yeah, I've tried it, and
it just I want to do it and actually and
there's no point. Yeah, and I wind up switching like
(28:25):
the knife to my non dominant hand and then I don't.
It's really, it's really silly. You're like this just called
this whole thing off just to fingers. Bring me a
bowl of soup that I can just drink from and
leave me somewhere outside where I'm not going to embarrass anybody. Ah.
That's the scandalous history of the fork. Uh maybe more
(28:47):
questions than you've ever had about the Fork, but answered
answered yeah dramatically, in exactly and dramatically. So this brings
us to our listener. Man Dale wrote, growing up, I
had a neighbor who was from al Says Laurent, and
(29:07):
she would make an onion kiche and share with us.
Neither my mother nor I liked keish, so it's kind
of a burden. One day she brought over half of
an onion kiche, and we did not know what to
do with it. I asked if I should give it
to the dog, and my mother said that it would
not be good for her, so we should give it
to Dad for dinner, which we did from that day
(29:28):
Ford and through the generations, we still tell the kids,
don't feed that to the dog, give it to dad.
By the way, when keish became popular in the seventies,
we discovered that the neighbor was just a terrible cook,
and we do, in fact like keish. I want to
know so much more about this neighbor who like bringing
over half of an onion kish and just just yeah,
(29:50):
just like she sounds lovely right, I would love to
do even even if a terrible cook. Yes, Sophie wrote
in response to our Juliet Child episod out so throw
back to a little twelve year old Sophie that used
to watch Julie Child every week. This was my favorite
movie and was always delighted by Julia's personality and vision
of what cooking in a common housewife could be. My
(30:13):
English grandmother taught me to cook from a young age,
and I grew up loving food thanks to her good
old Wendy. I always told myself that I would do
the same thing and cook my way through mastering the
art of French cooking. But as I grew into a
teenager and then an adult, I forgot about my cooking
dream until I listened to your podcast on Julia and
I have now ordered my copy on Mastering the Art
(30:34):
of French Cooking and have set up an Instagram to
document my journey. That's so cool. Thank you, Sophie. Yeah,
I'm very excited for for you and your journey, and
I'm just sad that we can't try the food. Thanks
to both of you for writing in. Yes, if you
would like to write into us, you can do so.
Our email is food Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
(30:56):
We are also on social media. You can find us
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(31:25):
of this classic episode. We hope you enjoyed it. As
much as we did. Yes, I had forgotten, clearly, I
had forgotten something that shocked because it was fascinating. How
did I forget all of that? Well, and as as
I was saying to you, I feel like I remembered it,
I just don't remember doing it. I knew it was
an interesting topic. I we make We make a lot
(31:48):
of shows around here, we do. We do a lot
of times. You just have to make room. Oh yeah,
I jettison stuff like about thirty minutes afterwards. People are like,
oh man, what did you research this week? And I'm like,
I don't know. Yeah, some say exactly. Sometimes even the
topic is gone, like we uh, we have a lot
a lot of things. We're juggle a lot of things
(32:09):
about we do we do? Um oh I did. I
did try to um check in on Sophie and her
Instagram with her Julia Child updates. I couldn't find it. So,
you know, I hope that I hope that whatever Sophie
is up to, you're doing great. Yeah, and cooking. We're
not cooking as it makes you happy to do so, yes,
(32:30):
and we hope that you listeners are as well, doing
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(32:52):
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for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way. H
Hello, and welcome to save our protection of I Heart
radio and stuff media. I'm Annies and I'm Lauren Folk BAM,
and today we have a classic episode for you about forks. Yes,
and it has sort of a hilarious reason why we
chose it. Uh yeah, because a couple of weeks ago, Um,
Annie and I were doing the thing where every every
(00:29):
just about every recording session, after we finish our episodes,
we stay in the studio for another like ten or
fifteen minutes and talk about what our next topics should be. UM,
and a couple of weeks ago, Annie very excitedly was like,
what about forks? And I was like, oh, man, I
bet there's some wild stuff about forks, And so I
like google forks and like look at all these lists
(00:51):
of all the different kinds of forks there are. And
we were like, yeah, we're totally going to do an
episode about forks. And then like three days later, I
was like, dude, we definitely did forks like two years ago.
Both of us had forgotten about it completely. Yeah, and
uh I, I it's funny. I really remember sports. I
(01:13):
remember that episode. And I was telling Lauren because I
was trying to remember what specific reason why I wanted
to talk about it, and I think it was a
culmination of I had just been to Disney World and
of course the Little Mermaid ride with the fork and
then I mean the Dingle Hopper. Oh excuse me, Yes,
what a slip um. But also I'm somebody who, as
(01:35):
listeners of the show probably know, I love a good
pun and I love a good title. Oh that was it,
and I think I was just very excited about the
pun possibilities with fork. Yeah, um, we should see if
we still have the email where I wrote all the
titles for it. What? Okay? What the Fork is? What
(01:59):
you wanted to call this one? Yes? Yes, but I
mean there's a plethora. There's like fork in the road.
There's so many ways you could go with that. Obviously
what the Fork? There are many other variety of variations
on that one. Maybe I'm just gonna go and do that.
I think I have to get it out of my
system and uh, maybe we'll post it somewhere. There you go.
(02:20):
My process, my terrible, terrible process. Uh. And when I
was do we before we do these classics, we look
to see if there's been any news updates and everything
I got apart from fork the place, which is the
place that exists in Utah and Washington. I believes for
(02:41):
Washington there's a fork Utah, I think. But I got
a bunch of stuff about bitcoin forks, and I read
it and I don't understand it. So there's that. Well, cool,
that's that exists. Good good news update. Yeah, yeah, if
you're curious, that's all. Well, if you're curious, you pro
you already know about it. But I didn't know. It
(03:02):
was news to me. I know very little about bitcoins.
I'm not afraid to say. Yes, that is not our
wheelhouse on this food show, not on this food show.
But forks you have, they're fascinating, they have a fascinating history. Yeah,
listening back to this episode was was pretty great. Um,
so yeah, we are going to let former Indian Lauren
(03:22):
take it away. Hello, and welcome to food Stuff on
Lauren Vocabam and I'm Annie Reese, and today we're going
to talk about the fork. Yeah, we've already done a
(03:43):
sport episode and and Aunt Lauren mentioned that she'd run
across some kind of scandalous history of the fork. Yeah
they didn't catch on for quite a while, but okay, Yeah,
let's let's get right into it. Fork. What is it? Well,
I guess we can describe it. It's a pronged utensil
used for spearing foods. Stick with points there if you will.
(04:06):
But there are a lot of variations on them. You've
got fruit fork, salad fork, dessert fork, fish for deli fork,
snail fork, serving fork, roast fork, asparagus fork, cheese for chip, fork,
crab fork, olive fork orstra fork, pastry fork, pickle fork,
pie fork, relish work, stuck at fork, t fork, tarrapin fort,
toasting fork, spaghetti fork. Oh, this isn't evil all the forks.
(04:26):
There's more and I had to cut down there. You're
slacking on your fork wrap here. I know, Annie, I
could have gone on for probably like four more lines.
That's that's going to be in our deep cut of
this episode. Yes, the b side. The name comes from
the Latin word for pitchfork, for which was borrowed by
(04:50):
Germanic languages as well. I think in A Little Mermaid
it was the dingle hopper. Yeah, oh, the dingle hopper.
A Little Mermaid throwback and histories how some strong emotions
about the fork take this nineteen sixties poem from Charles Simmock.
This strange thing must have crept right out of hell.
(05:11):
It resembles a bird's foot worn around the cannibal's neck.
As you hold it in your hand, as you stab
with it into a piece of meat, it is possible
to imagine the rest of the bird it's head, which,
like your fist, is large, bald, beakless and blind. Oh yeah,
(05:31):
I should have done that in slam poetry style. Oh well,
okay next time. That whole spike with points thing is
the crux, if you will, of fork technology, and it's
what developed very slowly over time, like okay, slight tangent.
Do you all remember any of the parody razor commercials
(05:53):
that happened over the past couple decades. Started in the
nineteen seventies when a Saturday Night Live, in response to
a new double bladed razor, did a parody about a
three bladed razor. Ah, it was all lolls until that
actually happened in the nineteen nineties, invoking further parodies. An
Onion article in two thousand four titled everything We're doing
five blades, which happened a year later. Um and then
(06:16):
SNL and Mad TV responded with like fourteen and twenty
blade razors, which have, for the good of all of
us not come to fruition. And look, this is a
long tangent, but this is also definitely how forks have happened. Yes,
it's a very slow progression, very slow and kind of hilarious.
And we're going to get to that just as soon
(06:36):
as we take a quick break for word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So
the precursor to the fork is the simple cooking spike
used to spear, roast and lift food, but it would
(06:59):
be thousands of years before a second spike developed, and
the single spike implement would last into the Middle Ages.
You're making this sound very epic. I'm trying. It's a fork. No,
you're succeeding. In the world of cutlery. The fork in
its modern form is one of the newest eating implements
on the block. More primitive two pronged versions used mainly
(07:21):
for cooking and serving, go way back to ancient times,
though uh, these were larger than the kitchen forks we
have these days to accommodate you know, fire, as opposed
to just a pan um they were based on pitchforks
and probably not very much smaller, which is kind of
hilarious to imagine people trying to eat with these things.
Oh yeah, that's why they didn't. That's why they didn't.
(07:42):
Never mind, they're like, this is a bad idea at
the table. People would rather use spoons, are their fingers
or knives. People had a knife or small dagg around
hand most of the time, and that was the most
all purpose bit of cutlery for both slicing and conveying
food to your mouth or other bits of food like bread. Yeah. Yeah.
(08:04):
Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were some of the first
to use table forks, and archaeologists unearthed forks made out
of bone belonging to China's Kijah culture from nine hundred BC.
Persian nobility may have used something resembling the fork during
the eighth and ninth century, and by the eleventh century
forks were being used by the Byzantine Empire, but they
(08:27):
were probably for the most part absent and regarded with
suspicion by much of Europe, probably because it's resemblance to
the pitchfork, which made people think of the devil they
were super fancy forks, though like like we gilded sweetmeat
forks have survived, Which brings us to the wedding of
a Byzantine princess to Italian does Dominico Salvo set in
(08:50):
Venice and one thousand four CE. The princess caused a
bit of a scandal, or perhaps a minor scandal, when
at the wedding east she whipped out a golden four Yeah.
The clergy roundly condemned this as a sinful show of decadence.
She also brought the napkin and finger bowl two which
(09:14):
that's pretty that's a little over the top. According to
the time manuscript from that time, written and illustrated by St.
Peter Domain Read, such was the luxury of her habits
that she deigned not to touch her food with her fingers,
but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into
small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden
(09:35):
instrument with two prongs, and thus carried to her mouth.
God and his wisdom has provided man with natural forks
his fingers. They were serious about this, like there was
like they did not forget. There was a follow up
right after her death from the plague a few years
later Domain claimed it was God's punishment for her lavishness, writing,
(09:58):
this woman's vanity was hateful to Almighty God, and so
unmistakably did he take his revenge. For he raised over
her the sword of his divine justice, so that her
whole body did putrefy in all her limbs begin to wither.
For using a fork for that, I just my brain
(10:21):
just ran out of words. It's a different time, different
different dra Well. After that, inventory documents and wills show
that the fork slowly spread through Europe. In the case
of Will's largely suck at forks used for eating candied
syrupy fruit. Still middle age folks WI generally ate off
(10:45):
stale realms of bread called trencher, sort of scooping. Yeah. Yeah.
In the fourteen hundreds, forks started appearing in Italian cookbooks,
which brings us to her second marriage and wedding of
the episode that the second wedding scandal, I know to
wedding scandals. In one episode, in her fifty three wedding
to King Henry the Second, Catherine de Medici brought with
(11:08):
her silver forks and my gold and silver from Italy
to France. There was much laughter as members of the
court got food all over themselves and their attempts to
use this new fangled eating device. De Medici was a
trend setter, and all things Italian were fashionable thanks to
the Renaissance. Catherine went on a tour of sorts during
the fifteen sixties, appearing at huge public festivals to demonstrate
(11:32):
the monarchy's power, wherein onlookers would watch she ate with forks.
Two types of forks were the norm at the time,
hefty two pronged things used mainly for meat, and small,
dainty ones used for desserts. But there was still resistance
flock resistance, yes, still going strong. In sixteen o five,
(11:53):
an allegorical novel about Henry the Third's courtiers penned anonymously,
featured an island inhabited by these over the top hermaphrodites
that ate with forks. Feminine, defensive, no not caring that
they were spilling more food than they were consuming in
(12:14):
their exit, just deplorable. During the time of Henry the Third,
forks were still used mostly by the well off, who
would travel with these fancied cases of silverware. Uh and,
according to Caroline Young's essay Feeding Desire, the fort came
with unset tilling me. I had trouble saying that, so
I had to practice of feminine aura until until about
(12:37):
that time British sailors turned down eating with what they
perceived to be unmanly forks. No way, a real man
don't eat with folks. They don't eat with forks. Learning
a lot. An English traveler named Thomas Coryate traveled across
continental Europe and wrote about his observations in sixteen eight
(13:00):
in crew Detas Hastily gobbled up in five months or
creates crew Detas Great titles both yes. He explained how
how the Italians did this mysterious thing in which they
used a fork and a knife to cut and eat
(13:20):
their food, and then kind of summed up by saying, uh,
the reason of this their curiosity is because the Italian
cannot buy any means endure to have his dish touched
with fingers, seeing all men's fingers are not alike clean. Hereupon,
I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by
this forked cutting of meat, not only while I was
in Italy, but also in Germany and oftentimes in England.
(13:43):
Since I came home and after this published creates. Friends
called him first of her, first of her. At the time,
this meant both fork bearer and man doomed to hang
pretty good nickname yeah. As ideas about hygiene change, the
fort grew in popularity, now with three and sometimes four
(14:06):
times with a slight curve, which made it more functional
as well. Flatware around this time, especially for the non
royal but stillwell off, was widespread lee a part of
one's personal tool set. Even relatively common common folks what
would carry their own case with a knife, fork, and
spoon for use at home, when they were guests in
(14:28):
other people's homes and when they were traveling about, and
because they were these mobile devices. The development of that
flared shape of the handles and also of of the
curvature of the fork was partially to help keep the
business ends of everything in check when they were all
bundled up in your pocket or pack. Mhmm. Charles the
(14:48):
First declared in sixty three it is decent to use
the fork, but it was still mostly only utilized by
the upper class. King Louis the fourteenth told his childre
and however, to ignore the instructions of their tutor and
stay away from those forks. Yeah. In seventeen sixty of
(15:09):
French Aristocrat described a fancy dinner party in Turkey, making
jibes at their lack of experience with the fork. Quote.
I saw one woman throughout the dinner taking olives with
her fingers and then impaling them on her fork in
order to eat them in the French manner. No, that's
not how that works. No, no, and I can't. I mean,
I've done similar things. We'll share, but you know, right
(15:33):
this was This was also just a wee bet. After
well appointed homes began including whole specific rooms bent just
for dining and multiple sets of silverware for when guests
came over multiple sets. What with industrialization, more commoners began
using the fork. King Louis the thirteenth Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu,
(15:54):
who found the practice of frequent guests to use to
clean his teeth with his knife extremely almost so dangerous. Yeah,
so gross. The Cardinal had the tips of the guest
knives ground down. The court emulated the practice, eager to
copy royalty, and in six nine Francis King Louis declared
(16:16):
that pointed knives at the dinner table and on the
street were legal. Yeah, Following this decree, existing knives were
rounded down and new knives were made with rounded tips,
and this brings is to kind of an interesting difference
in eating habits. Yeah Um. At the beginning of the
seventeenth century, forks were still not typical of the American household,
(16:40):
where they would instead use the new blunt tipped imported
knives to cut while studying the food they were slicing
into with a spoon in their left or non dominant hand. Um.
The diner would then have to switch hands so that
the food could be scooped up and eaten with a spoon,
and this practice led to the z zag method Americans
(17:01):
still used to this day. More on that a little
bit later. One American diner wrote of the fork in
the eighteen hundreds, eating peas with the fork is as
bad as trying to eat soup with a knitting needle,
And in eighteen forty two, Charles Dickens noted of people
on a Pennsylvania river boat, they thrust their broad bladed
knives and two pronged forks further down their throats than
(17:22):
I ever saw the same weapons go before, except in
the hands of a skilled juggler. Wow It's suggested in
the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink that American reluctance
to adopt forks traces to Puritan ideals from the Pilgrim's
original colonies. At the time, the new fangled and often
upper class used to forks would have represented everything that
(17:45):
they were turning away from. And that's why it took
so long to catch on over here. That's true. I
never really thought about that. Yeah, despite resistance, the fork
had made it by finally made it to the big time,
and by eighteen in America. In by eighties seven etiquette
(18:06):
books included best practices for not embarrassing yourself with a fork.
Here's an excerpt from an eighteen eighties seven book on manners.
The fork has now become the favorite and fashionable utensil
for conveying food to the mouth. First it crowded out
the knife, and now in its pride, it has invaded
the domain of the once powerful spoon. The spoon is
(18:27):
now pretty well subdued also, and the fork, insolent and triumphant,
has become a sumptuary tyrant. The true devotee of fashion
does not dare to use a spoon, except to stir
his tea or to eat his soup with and meekly
eats his ice cream with a fork and pretends to
like it. They were seriously ice cream forks, though I
(18:48):
mean like like fancy tables at the time might have
had an ice cream fork. And additionally, you know, it's
like status symbols oyster forks, salad forks, lettuce forks, melon forks,
strawberry forks, sandwich forks, and bread forks. By the turn
of the twentieth century, the fashionable advice was to never
use a knife or spoon when a fork will do these.
(19:11):
It's intense. This is also the time around about here
that we hit peak times five times, six tied, and yes,
even seven timed. Forks appeared generally as serving forks, not
eating forks, and the ones with the most times were
apparently startine forks or bacon forks. If you've never seen
(19:31):
a picture of a seven tied fork, go now. I'm
resistingly urged. It's it's beautiful in its ridiculousness. Um and
materials technology wound up having a lot to do with
the spread of forks. Up until the seventeen hundreds. You
wanted good quality forks to be made of silver, because silver,
(19:52):
unlike many other metals, will not react with acidic foods
and uh kind of ruin the taste. But silver, of
course is expensive. When silver plaining, therefore, was invented around
the seventeen hundreds, it allowed what would soon become an
expanding middle class of Europeans access to a fancy flatwear.
And beginning in the nineteen hundreds, you get so many more,
(20:15):
even more types of forks, from bake light forks in
the nineteen forties to the bright neon ones of the
nineteen eighties. Oh yeah, plastic plastic makes possible. And comparisons
to chopsticks have pretty much existed since the forecast and
are more modern time. And here's one written written comparison
(20:35):
by Roland Bars in the nineteen seventies. By chopsticks, food
becomes no longer prey to which one does violence, meat
flesh over which one does battle, but as substance harmoniously transferred.
They transformed the previously divided substance into bird food and
rice into a flow of milk maternal. They tirelessly performed
(20:56):
the gesture which creates the mouthful, leaving to our element
Harry Manners armed with pikes and knives. That a fredation. Yeah,
so kind of more nonsense. Um, people have a lot
to say about forks. They really do, they really do.
I guess we're talking about them, so I, yeah, we
just did. We're doing a whole episode. We're not even
(21:18):
over yet, nope. Yeah, but we are going to take
a one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
and we're back. Thank you sponsor. Okay, so some kind
of science e things about the fork. Yes, science and
(21:40):
future forks, future forks, starting with the smelly fork. The
smelly fork. Don't you want it so badly? No? I
want my fork? Okay. I thought I wanted my forks
to be neutral? Am I wrong? Annie? You M no,
probably not, but this does. I am intrigued by this.
So it's not really called the smell fork. It's called
(22:01):
the Aroma Revolution Kit. And it's this kit that comes
with four forks and twenty one cent vials things like
with sabby and passion fruit, and you put a drop
of the desired scent on a paper tab that you
then insert at the base of the fork, and then
if all goes according to plan, the scent will influence
(22:23):
the food you're actually eating with the fork, So maybe
tricking your brain with a scent of butter rather than
actual butter, like you smell it. Okay, sure, I mean
smell has a lot to do with taste. It certainly does.
In the article I was reading, they said like they
would put with saby the scent of the sabi and
(22:44):
then eat chocolate off the fork, and it would be
interesting combinations. A long way Togo. But you know, I mean,
I would just put some sabby and some chocolate if
I wanted to. But I mean, but but no, that's
that's fascinating. It is another fascinating fork, the smart fork
versus smelly folk, now the smart folk. At the yearly
(23:04):
Tech convention c E s In, a company released a
fork that will monitor how many bites you take and
your rate of food intake. I'm not sure that's information
I want to know. If you ate too fast, it
would vibrate the way that your phone does when you
get a text message to tell you to slow down.
The idea here being that if you eat more slowly
um allowing feedback from your stomach to go on and
(23:26):
reach your brain, you'll consume less overall. It's a weight
loss tool, and because it provided that vibration, which in
the industry is called haptic feedback because it relates to
your sense of touch, it was called the happy fork.
Well yeah, which is pretty good. Also, yeah, pretty good fun.
It's still on the market, but I'm not sure how
(23:47):
popular it's ever gotten. I could use some reminders to
slow down when I'm eating. I don't know, I've got
other stuff to do. Sometimes, sometimes I want to enjoy it.
Sometimes I'm just like, there's a difference between eating quickly
and eating like you're a starving animal, which is what
I frequently find myself doing it. And I'm not sure
(24:08):
why why am I acting like I have no time
to eat? Ever? Again? Anyway, enough about my eating habits
and the work I might need to do to improve them. Um,
something that I frequently need reminders about our table etiquette. Yeah,
I like never went through like tillion or anything like that,
so I'm basically a mess at a table. Um I
wanted to feel really bad, Yeah, but so okay. So
(24:31):
there are actually two schools of fork etiquette. Of course,
as we mentioned earlier, the American style is the zig
zag kind of thing. Um. But but first, the the okay. So,
so the European style, in the Continental tradition that developed
during the eighteen hundreds, it's considered a proper etiquette to
hold your fork in your non dominant hand times down okay,
(24:53):
and the way the way that you should hold it
here you okay, you hold the base of the forks
handle at the base of your palm, your thumb and
finger grip the stem of the fork, and then you
stabilize the neck of the fork with your index finger. Okay, okay,
all right, try this with a pen if you're at home,
(25:14):
or if you have a fork, that's even better. Um
that that the fork, though, stays in that position, and
the knife in your dominant hand is used to both
cut food and to kind of push it gently onto
the downward times of the fork. Okay, okay. Properly speaking,
you would set the knife down when you're not actively
using it, but some places, especially the English, dude just
(25:35):
kind of hold onto it the whole time. Oh man, Yeah,
I feel like I'm going to be tested on this later.
Oh yeah, We're we're about to take a field ture.
I'm totally gonna see if I can put this. Put
this to you, um in this tradition. In the European
continental side, it's generally considered very crashed to actually put
any part of the fork except maybe maybe the very
(25:58):
tips of the times into your mouth. Really yeah, So
that's why Charles Dickens is all totally yeah. Yeah. If
you're dealing with food that would require putting the silverware
in your mouth, it's better to uh to use the
fork or your knife to push that food into your spoon,
which is okay to touch your lips as long as
(26:18):
you do it from the side of the spoon, not
the tip. Okay. So American style okay, um, this is
basically old fashioned European style, but is still considered proper
here in America. To um okay, to uh to use
your knife with your dominant hand, with your fork helping
stabilize the food with your non dominant hand. And then
(26:39):
once you've cut a piece of food, you put down
the knife entirely, switch the fork to your dominant hand
for eating, all right, And you hold this fork times up,
not times down, not never times down. Maybe I don't know,
I don't know your life, um, but but yeah, and
you hold it more like you would hold a hold
a pen. So the so that the base of the
(27:01):
handle rests on kind of the the meaty bit of
your hand between the thumb and index finger. Um. The
neck of the fork is supported in between your index
and middle finger. Yeah, and uh, and then your thumb
can balance pressure on the stem of the fork. So right. Yeah.
So it's sort of like a like a like a
(27:22):
scoopy things, and it's okay to scoop foods that require scooping,
like peas, say, into the curved tinines of your fork,
and to use it like a spoon. In her book
The Rituals of Dinner from Margaret Vizier, says of this
denying a modern fork, it's possible. Spoonlike use is wantonly perverse,
wantonly won. So there you go. I hope, I hope
(27:45):
that made some kind of it's hard to describe visual things.
I wish we had been filming it because Laura and
I were both acting like caveman trying to learn for
the first time with with my terrible claw hands. I
felt very Zoidberg in the middle of all of that.
I was just like, what is it doing? What? What
are these hand things? I don't understand. I feel like
(28:05):
next time I eat. I'm going to pay so much
attention to what I'm doing with my hands that I'm
going to get confused. Yeah, I have to say I can't.
Being an American, not switching hands is very difficult for
me to to manage. Yeah. Yeah, I've tried it, and
it just I want to do it and actually and
there's no point. Yeah, and I wind up switching like
(28:25):
the knife to my non dominant hand and then I don't.
It's really, it's really silly. You're like this just called
this whole thing off just to fingers. Bring me a
bowl of soup that I can just drink from and
leave me somewhere outside where I'm not going to embarrass anybody. Ah.
That's the scandalous history of the fork. Uh maybe more
(28:47):
questions than you've ever had about the Fork, but answered
answered yeah dramatically, in exactly and dramatically. So this brings
us to our listener. Man Dale wrote, growing up, I
had a neighbor who was from al Says Laurent, and
(29:07):
she would make an onion kiche and share with us.
Neither my mother nor I liked keish, so it's kind
of a burden. One day she brought over half of
an onion kiche, and we did not know what to
do with it. I asked if I should give it
to the dog, and my mother said that it would
not be good for her, so we should give it
to Dad for dinner, which we did from that day
(29:28):
Ford and through the generations, we still tell the kids,
don't feed that to the dog, give it to dad.
By the way, when keish became popular in the seventies,
we discovered that the neighbor was just a terrible cook,
and we do, in fact like keish. I want to
know so much more about this neighbor who like bringing
over half of an onion kish and just just yeah,
(29:50):
just like she sounds lovely right, I would love to
do even even if a terrible cook. Yes, Sophie wrote
in response to our Juliet Child episod out so throw
back to a little twelve year old Sophie that used
to watch Julie Child every week. This was my favorite
movie and was always delighted by Julia's personality and vision
of what cooking in a common housewife could be. My
(30:13):
English grandmother taught me to cook from a young age,
and I grew up loving food thanks to her good
old Wendy. I always told myself that I would do
the same thing and cook my way through mastering the
art of French cooking. But as I grew into a
teenager and then an adult, I forgot about my cooking
dream until I listened to your podcast on Julia and
I have now ordered my copy on Mastering the Art
(30:34):
of French Cooking and have set up an Instagram to
document my journey. That's so cool. Thank you, Sophie. Yeah,
I'm very excited for for you and your journey, and
I'm just sad that we can't try the food. Thanks
to both of you for writing in. Yes, if you
would like to write into us, you can do so.
Our email is food Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
(30:56):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram at food stuff and also on Facebook and
Twitter at food Stuff. HSW stands for how Stuff Works.
We hope that we hear from you. We hope that
Dylan does not completely hate us. That's Dylan Fagan, our
wonderful producer, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way. That brings us to the end
(31:25):
of this classic episode. We hope you enjoyed it. As
much as we did. Yes, I had forgotten, clearly, I
had forgotten something that shocked because it was fascinating. How
did I forget all of that? Well, and as as
I was saying to you, I feel like I remembered it,
I just don't remember doing it. I knew it was
an interesting topic. I we make We make a lot
(31:48):
of shows around here, we do. We do a lot
of times. You just have to make room. Oh yeah,
I jettison stuff like about thirty minutes afterwards. People are like,
oh man, what did you research this week? And I'm like,
I don't know. Yeah, some say exactly. Sometimes even the
topic is gone, like we uh, we have a lot
a lot of things. We're juggle a lot of things
(32:09):
about we do we do? Um oh I did. I
did try to um check in on Sophie and her
Instagram with her Julia Child updates. I couldn't find it. So,
you know, I hope that I hope that whatever Sophie
is up to, you're doing great. Yeah, and cooking. We're
not cooking as it makes you happy to do so, yes,
(32:30):
and we hope that you listeners are as well, doing
great cooking or not cooking. However, however, great meat, whatever
that means to you. Yeah, and we would love to
hear from you. You can email us at Hello at
savor pod dot com. We're also on social media. You
can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at saver
pod and we do hope to hear from you. Savor
(32:52):
is production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit to
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way. H
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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