Fish knife

The fish knife together with fish fork represent a set of utensils specialized for eating fish. A fish knife is a strange-looking, purposely blunt implement.

History

Fish knives, like most highly specialized utensils, date back to the Victorian era. The fish knife was preceded in the 18th century by a silver fish slice (also known as fish trowel, fish carver, and fish knife), a broad tool used for serving fish (thus yet another name, fish server), pudding, and other soft desserts. At the turn of the 19th century, the originally symmetric and broad blade of the fish slice evolved into a scimitar-like shape, with the knife often marketed as a matched set with a four-tined serving fork.

Prior to the modern fish knife introduction in the 19th century, aristocracy ate fish with two dinner forks, one to separate a piece, another one to eat. The other approach used a single fork, with a slice of bread for assistance. Use of the knife came from the rich commoners, with high society at first frowning upon it as a too specialized tool (and the one they were also missing in their hereditary silverware sets). In the 21st century, Queen Camilla, according to The Times of London, "wouldn't be seen dead using a fish knife," and, according to an etiquette expert William Hanson, the vast Buckingham Palace cutlery collection does not have a single fish knife, partly because it's "seen as down-market," and partly because "Buckingham Palace's cutlery goes back to Georgian times and fish knives had not been invented then so they don't have them by default."

Use of silver as a material for the knife was the only available means (before the arrival of the stainless steel) to enable pairing of lemon and fish without encountering a metallic taste.

Construction

The knife has a distinct shape that evolved from a fish server.