Most aspects of food culture (e.g. styles of cooking, pans, dishes, etc.) you could fill a book with all the varieties of ways different cultures have invented to do the same basic task.
Not so with cutlery, for all the different types of worldwide cuisine your choice is chopsticks or “western” cutlery (knife, fork, spoon)*. What other options are there? Are these really the only two types of cutlery that mankind has invented?
Sporks.
Was going to say sporks
Nutcracker and pick for lobster.
Skewer:
Tongs:
Billions of people simply use their hands. Imagine scooping stuff up in a pita.
Funnel
Tube.
Well I saw this cooking show where a guy was eating whipped cream off a girl’s butt. Maybe it wasn’t a cooking show.
Also, maybe we can look forward to a future where we can eat kiwifruit with a spife made from kiwifruit. Who needs flying cars?
Hamburger bun and all the like eatable utensils . also for that matter bread as traditionally used as a utensil ( not common in the US)
Straw
Nipple
Feeding tube
Bowls and cups are eating utensils too. E.g. Japan where they generally sip soups directly from the bowl rather than using spoons.
Some foods are designed to double as eating utensils - e.g. chips for scooping up dip.
I’ve never seen anybody eat with either of those.
Really? Because skewers are pretty common.
Tongs are less common as an eating utensil. But you can find people using practice chopsticks, which are essentially tongs. They’re a set on regular chopsticks which are connected with a hinge.
Eating off a skewer is pretty common - yakitori and satay, for example. Also, corn dogs.
Also, I don’t think anyone mentioned toothpicks. Though I suppose you could call that a type of skewer.
Then there’s the 2-tined fork/toothpick thing that comes in packages of yukimi daifuku (mochi ice cream).
He shoots he scores! That’s what I was going to say and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one, but Johnny got here first!
The difference is that skewers tend to be part of the cooking process. They are then used as a handy handle (howdy, howdy, howdy) to eat with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone approach a pile of food with a naked skewer…
Toothpicks are a better example - they are sometimes used to eat food that was not cooked or prepared with toothpicks.
You can sciip up the food, you can spear it, or you can grasp it.
Are we familiar with a tool for extruding or blowing food into your mouth? Throwing? Do servents count?
I wonder what Gullford would suggest?
The hammer - perfect with bib, butcher paper covering the table and all-you-can-eat crab diners.
What about a fondue fork? Is that just a variation on a basic fork or is it a separate utensil?
Same question with a Chinese soup spoon?
How much variation can there be in the form and use of a utensil before it becomes a different utensil?
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