If you do it, you probably don’t think much about it. But it looks very odd to those of use who leave the fork in one hand, and we do think, “huh, that person keeps switching hands.”
No doubt. I imagine many of us in the American-style hand-switching camp also internalized the “use your dominant hand to feed yourself” mantra in part because it’s also standard etiquette on both sides of the Atlantic to hold one’s spoon in the right hand.
That’s how I eat, too, but I’m sort of ambidexterous on account of having a left-handed father and a right-handed mother. Dad didn’t care, so when I threw a ball or swung a bat left-handed, he let me. At the table, though, Mom insisted I eat with my right hand. I can eat either way, with knife and fork, or chopsticks.
I’m “sort of ambidexterous” as well. Generally right hand, but it’s whatever is convenient. Once I picked up scissors and was going to cut with my left hand, because it was convenient, then had a “I get why they have left handed scissors” moment.
Drinking coffee from the saucer:
Before World War 2, this was the standard upper-class and middle-class way of doing it. The theory was, coffee would come out of the pot too scalding hot to drink. So you poured it from the cup to the saucer to cool it down to a drinkable temperature.
It also advertised to your guests that you were rich enough to buy fine china cups with matching saucers. Working class people had no problem drinking straight from the cup.
My dad also liked “burned” foods. He grew up in a house with a wood-burning stove, and Mom said that his mother usually over-cooked everything. At breakfast, Dad would deliberately burn the toast, get a knife and scrape the char off, then add butter and jelly. It didn’t matter how fancy a toaster was available, Dad would turn it up to the highest setting. Un-charred toast simply was not part of his worldview.
There are two types of Southerners.
Some treat grits like mashed potatoes, and eat them with butter and salt.
Some treat grits like cereal, and eat them with cream and sugar.
Each group thinks that the others are a bunch of deviants, heretics, and closet Yankees, whose ancestors are no doubt responsible for losing the War.
I am not a Southerner, and I like grits with a bit of honey or maple syrup.
Yes, regular scissors are designed to work when held in the right hand. I can use right handed scissors with my left hand, but the action is slightly awkward (you need to pull where you want to push) and i only do it when cutting my right fingernails or when access is restricted such that it’s a lot easier with the left hand.
I’m also sort of ambidextrous, but i use my left hand for most tasks that involve fine motor coordination, including chopsticks.
I like rare meat, but well-done baked goods. I don’t want a gooey center. That’s gross. Even if it doesn’t actually taste of raw flour (and sometimes it does) is just not as nice as if it were fully cooked. I don’t like my cookies literally burnt, but i like them well done, with crunchy brown edges. I don’t like my toast literally burnt, either, but I’d rather scrape off a little char than have pale, soft, undertoasted toast. When someone else is sad about overcoming the toast, i volunteer to take it off their hands.
My first husband and I diverged on this point (among others). Our marriage was doomed from the start. Of course, he was a literal damyankee.
Most interesting. It appears that this Brit is an American style switcher. I never knew that it was a thing. It’s just logical. Why would anyone think that always holding a fork in your left hand was going to be the easiest way to eat?
In passing, I never got (what I assume to be) the British practice of holding a fork archwise and shuffling food onto it on what is an obviously unstable manner. It’s up there with stiff little fingers.
j
That reminds me: I grew up eating rather dry turkey (which we smothered in gravy), so whenever I eat moist turkey at someone else’s house I find it to be kind of slimy.
My wife and I agree on grits; maybe that’s why we’ve stayed married for 30 years. She’s technically not a Yankee, having grown up in Maryland.
They’re all crazy, and the south was always going to lose the war. The only grits worth eating are cheese grits, with hot sauce.
(I’m a Texan, we only barely qualify as southerners, more south by southwest. 
)
I watch Blue Bloods and Jamie eats with his fork upside down. Maybe one other family member does it, but I find it weird and would not the whole family eat that way?
And if you do the fork/knife switch, you eat slower, which is good.
The only way i like grits is fried in bacon grease with some shredded cheese on top.
I do dab a little tabasco on mine, but in general i do not care for spicy foods.
I would drive you nuts. I sometimes hold the fork tines up, and other times hold it tines down, depending on what I’m doing with it.
Only for a leftie. The idea is to hold the fork, the primary eating utensil for solid food, in your dominant hand – whichever one it is – and the knife in the other, for the reasons already explained.
When you’re having dinner, the objective is to eat, not to demonstrate your prowess at juggling! Perhaps the truly elegant diner could learn to fling both knife and fork into the air every few seconds in such a way that they switch sides in mid-air, and deftly catch them each time, thus combining dinner with a minor circus act! My own preference is to hold the utensils where it feels most comfortable and just eat my dinner. As a rightie, the fork is always in my right hand, just like the spoon when eating soup.
I’m pretty sure that people who switch the fork between hands find that natural and comfortable, too.
My apparent adamance about the knife-fork thing is mostly in jest, but I really do eat how I describe and find it perfectly natural. I honestly cannot imagine constantly switching knife and fork. At the very least, it’s wasted time and effort. The tasks required of the knife are extremely minimal, unless, say, you’re trying to cut a steak that’s been overdone to the consistency of shoe leather. The only time I hold a knife in my right hand is when I’m in the kitchen carving a roast with a chef’s knife.
Huh, carving. I hadn’t thought of that. When i eat i leave the fork in my left hand and that knife in my right. But when I’m carving, especially something complicated like a whole roast bird, i sometimes switch the utensils from one hand to the other you get a better angle.
Naw, like others mentioned before, I put the knife in my dominant hand. It’s the sharp one doing the delicate work, after all. I can maneuver food into my mouth with the fork using my left hand just fine. If I’m not using a knife, it’s a toss up as to which hand is doing the forking/spooning.
Do you have a cite for any of this? It strikes me as highly unlikely that upper-class and middle-class people would do this.