KNIVES
Knives have been used as weapons, tools, and eating utensils since prehistoric times.
Since hosts did not provide cutlery for their guests during the Middle Ages in Europe, most people carried their own knives in sheaths attached to their belts. These knives were narrow and the sharply pointed ends were used to spear food and then raise it to one's mouth.
Table knives were introduced around 1600, but long after knives were adopted for table use, they continued to be used as weapons. Thus, the multi-purpose nature of the knife always posed the conceivable threat of danger at the dinner table.
Once forks began to gain popular acceptance, (forks being more efficient for spearing food), there was no longer any need for a pointed tip at the end of a dinner knife.
In France, in the 1630s, Armand Jean du Plessis (better known as Duc de Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII) got tired of watching people stabbing their knives and daggers into chunks of food and then at the end of the meal picking their teeth with the sharp ends of their daggers. He ordered the kitchen staff to file off the sharp points of all house knives, and soon round-tipped knives became the latest thing.
The grinding down of knife points led to other design changes. Cutlers began to make the blunt ends of knives wider and rounder so that any food which fell between the two tines of a fork could be piled on the knife. In fact, many knives were designed with a handle like a pistol grip and a blade which curved backward so the wrist would not have to be contorted to get food to the mouth.
In 1669, King Louis XIV of France banned pointed knives, at the table or as weapons, trying to reduce violence.
This birth of blunt-tipped knives in Europe had a effect on American dining etiquette. At the beginning of the 18th Century, few forks were being imported to America.
The blunted knives imported from Europe are not so easy to eat with as pointed ones were, so Americans started using the spoon to steady food as they cut and then switch the spoon to the opposite hand in order to scoop up food to eat. The beginnings of what is known today as the zig-zag method.
This distinctly American style of eating continued even after forks became commonplace in the United States.
