Our cutlery drawer is a confusing place.  Why do forks come in so many different sizes?  We’re not exactly fancy eaters, but somehow we still seem to have a fair range of fork sizes.  At least when you get different sized forks on the table in a restaurant you know to begin with the fork on the outside of the setting and gradually work inwards.  You might not know what each fork is for, but at least you know in what order to use it.  Of course, if you skip a course, everything gets thrown into disarray.  A tip to help avoid that predicament is never to use your fork for the soup.

 As far as I know we’ve only ever bought one cutlery set, and it is standard food eating size.  It included some dessert forks we never used much until our kids started wanting to use cutlery.  It is pretty easy to spot a dessert fork from a standard fork, the dessert forks are the ones too small to be of any practical use other than to a four year old.  Of course, when you’re four you can get away with using your hands, so why would you bother with cutlery anyway?  Because when you’re four you want to do everything grownups do, and by the time you realise eating is simpler with your hands it is too late and you’re expected to use a fork all the time.  Other than a cutlery conscious toddler, who decided dessert forks should be that small anyway?  When I eat a piece of cake I don’t intend to sample it crumb by crumb.  If I was designing a cutlery set from scratch the dessert fork would be the size of a small spade. 

The forks that really confuse me are the ones that are almost the same, but not quite.  In our standard issue cutlery set there are two slightly different sizes of fork.  They’re too similar to notice by eye.  To get a big one you have to line the ends up in the drawer and see which forks poke out the furthest.  This is important because if you’re hungry you don’t want to be mucking about with sub-size cutlery.  This is also a handy test if you don’t care which one is technically the dessert fork but just want to get stuck into a great smelling apple pie.

 When somebody else in our family sets the table I sometimes end up with the smaller size of the regular size forks.  Again, at first sighting there isn’t much difference, but after two or three mouthfuls I realise I’m having to work much harder than normal.  There are more arm motions required to deliver the equivalent amount of food to my tastebuds.  This rattles me sufficiently that I have to go and swap forks, although I’m also aware this is a sacrifice of precious eating time.  It is worth the effort to be able to eat with a regular, measured and comfortable rhythm.  Otherwise my mouth is producing saliva at a rate required for my regular eating habits, throwing the moisture to food ration way out of balance, and things can get messy.

 I’ve been to restaurants where there are more forks on the table than dishes listed on the menu.  It seems the amount of cutlery is a kind of culinary status symbol.  The more forks at the table setting, the fancier a place must be.  For a restaurant owner this is actually a fairly certain way to increase the amount you can charge.  At each table setting simply provide an entire cutlery drawer, and the eatery’s reputation is sure to go through the roof.  If they then get some decent size dessert forks into the place, they’ll never look back!