Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop, but, more importantly, Tod Cutler today
because we're going to talk about...well, Tod Cutler products a bit but, mainly, feasting
daggers, etiquette,. that kind of thing. So, this is is not some weird episode of cooking with Tod.
This is highlighting a very real point. I'm always saying that our ancestors were no more stupid than
us. You know they were doing amazing things with inferior technology but their knowledge of the
environment around them was extraordinary and they were extraordinary because of it.
Now in popular culture and well, Hollywood myth particularly, they also had no table manners but,
that is equally as untrue. They did have table manners, they were just a little bit different.
You know if you go back, well, seven eight hundred years, they had etiquette manuals
that would explain what you could do at the table. So, no burping - sorry Hollywood. I doubt it said
throwing chicken legs over your shoulder, because I don't think anybody did that particularly. But,
it says no rusty utensils, can't do that, they've got to be clean when you go to the table you've
got to wash your hands, no daggers. So, I'm sorry all you people out there, feasting daggers were
simply not a thing. I guess it's pretty obvious I wouldn't want to eat a chicken that's been carved
by somebody with a knife that was used to stab somebody half an hour before. It's just all a
bit gross and they knew it too but, Tod Cutler does sell: Antenna daggers, rondels, messers,
ruggers or bauernwehr, main gauche, quillon daggers, baselards - I think you get the
picture by now - dirks, stilettos and a whole load more things and just in case you think I'm
talking bollocks, well, we sell them too - by the fistful! Etiquette required that you had a clean,
not rusty, decent personal knife and that's what you would be using at the table if you weren't
being served. It's an obvious thing because of course, you know if you're cutting some meat or
some bread or something, if you're looking at your neighbour's knife and it's filthy, well,
you're not going to want to eat the food either so it's just a common sense thing.
They were not animals - again, sorry Hollywood, but that means that we've got loads of, well,
etiquette compliant table knives here spanning all kinds of periods but then also we have a
very 15th century thing. You see it quite a lot on the eating sets, sword scabbards, hunting
truces that sort of thing and it's the pricker. It is this little thing here and it really is
a slightly mysterious object so if you can enlighten me how this was used and what it
was used for exactly and you have sources, very importantly, I'm not interested in your opinion
I'd like to know the facts because everybody has an opinion on this thing. Is it for sharpening?,
is it for making holes in bits of leather randomly? is it for spiking your food like
some sort of one-time proto-fork? who knows. Is it for holding it down while you're carving it?
I've heard all of these things but actually I have never really come across anything which tells me
what the absolute truth is so - medieval pricker - let me know what it's for. So, when you are
sitting at the table waiting for your meat, how has it got to you ? Well, it's been prepared in
the kitchen using, well, kitchen knives of course. You know, cleavers and cooking knives, the sort of
thing that, well, Tod Cutler does provide for you it then arrives in the serving hall. Now,
the serving of meat is really quite almost like a ritualistic thing and so there are dedicated
knives to, depending what kind of meat you eat, dedicated knives for the serving of that food at
the table so, Tod Cutler doesn't yet do those serving knives, I'm sure we will in time but,
if you really want to scratch that itch, go to Tod's Workshop, we can do some custom stuff. Well,
that's going to be it for today. So, we've learned a little bit about the etiquette at the table,
keeping clean knives, of one not using a dagger, that doesn't change the fact that half the world,
and all of Hollywood thinks feasting daggers existed, so, at Christmas, for your turkey, for
your chicken whatever it is you have, get yourself a Tod Cutler feasting dagger if that's what you
want to call it - I never will. But they're there, they're 15 off until the 5th of December see ya.