HOW TO: CARE FOR YOUR CUTLERY

Blame the French. In her really great book Consider the Fork

(Penguin Books, $30), Bee Wilson says it was the French who “with their Cartesian exactness” made knifework into a system, a rulebook and a religion.

Once, everyone wore one knife. They stabbed their food with it, they picked their teeth with it, then they wiped it clean and let it dangle by their side for next time. Now, we use different knives for shucking oysters, dicing onions and filleting fish; for cleaving chickens, turning vegetables and slivering carpaccio. Also, for eating dinner. The table knife is a very special example of culinary evolution.

As Wilson points out: “It takes a civilisation in an advanced state of politesse — or passive aggression — to devise ON PURPOSE a knife that does a worse job of cutting.”

It’s possible you have not really considered the knife. Read Wilson’s book, or deep-dive into the internet for myriad ways you are DOING CUTLERY WRONG.

For example, never leave your cutlery wet or in a dishwasher. Dry it with a soft cloth. Wash it under running water as soon as you have eaten because if you leave it on the bench overnight coated in salty or acidic food remains, it may corrode and stain. This is, obviously, a lot of work. You may also just consider letting your kids lick the tomato sauce off their politely blunted knives.