After writing about bread forks the other day, I remembered another curious fork I had in my collection. I picked it up at an auction with a couple of other pieces of silver plate.
What was it? No idea. Time to find out.
A close-up of the scene on my mango fork
With the help of a heavy-duty magnifying glass, I was able to read the silver mark – EPNS Holland 90 2 – which I think basically means 2 grams of fine silver was used to coat the piece. I am guessing it dates to the 1920s.
I’ve used it occasionally as a meat fork but I was sure this was not what it was made for. I enlisted Mr Google’s help. The fork has three prongs, the centre one longer than the others. Pretty soon my search located something similar – a mango fork.
As I probed further I came across an article written last year by Maura Graber who runs the RSVP Institute of Etiquette in Ontario, California. Maura recently wrote Let Them Eat Cake: …the Strange Saga of the Mango Fork & The Unique Dining Habits of the Dutch. Here was someone who was undoubtedly an authority on this implement. Pretty soon I was talking to her via email and she was happy to answer my questions.
In one of her classes, Maura teaches young people about the proper use of eating utensils and she collects strange and unusual cutlery to illustrate her lessons.
“I first read about mango forks in 1993 and I wanted one for my collection of odd utensils.” she said.
When she started her search for a mango fork, Maura said all she had to go on was a written description. “I could find no photos. I searched high and low and was told by many reputable sources that there was no such fork.” In 1998 she finally located one in a shop that fit the description.
In 2005 she came across a photo of one buried in the back of a book on silver and it was Dutch. “I found one on eBay in 2006, but it was listed as a ‘chicken or cheese fork’. I started searching for other oddly named forks and found them all over eBay. Many had Dutch themes so I started looking on eBay Netherlands and found lots of them. All were listed as cake forks.” Maura now has more than a hundred in her collection and still can’t resist the occasional purchase.
Two French, rather utilitarian looking forks by Christofle, amidst of a sea of Dutch forks from Maura Graber's collection
The Dutch have a history with mangoes, she said “though every Dutch person that I have spoken with says there are no mangoes in Holland, and the Dutch do not like mangoes. Historically though, the Dutch colonised a lot of the tropics and helped spread mango trees to countries they were not native to, whether Dutch folk currently want to acknowledge that fact or not.”
Her curiosity about the mango fork took her to Amsterdam.
“On my first foray into the city, I bought a mango from a shop nearby my hotel. So they do have mangoes in Holland and they have a history of them.”
Why did the Dutch think these were cake forks? Maura was given many different reasons for the cake-fork theory in Amsterdam, but none made any sense.
“The whole thing is absurd. Many utensils were invented for uses other than what they are sold for now. Tomato servers became cranberry servers, after cranberry came canned. Orange spoons became grapefruit spoons after oranges were no longer deemed a delicacy. Bird knives (also known as ‘duck knives’) became steak knives, after steak became more popular than fowl. But I can’t see a mango fork being now for cake. It doesn’t work.”
“With all my research, I still have no idea why. It’s as if everyone over there forgot what they were for, then one day someone said, ‘What is this for?’ Someone else responded, ‘I don’t know. Cake?’ So it was decided the forks are for cake. Truly odd.”
My Dutch mango fork and an almost-matching cake or pastry server
Funnily enough, one of the other pieces I picked up in the auction with my mango fork was a silver plated cake server, also made in Holland, with a very similar handle to the fork. So obviously the Dutch did have cake or pastry servers available to them.
It seems mango forks were a Victorian dining implement that was created for a delicacy that only the wealthy could afford at the time, or were thought to appreciate. Victorians were known for their one-upmanship at the dining table. The wealthier they were, the more exotic the food being served. The more silver they had for the exotic foods, the more light was reflected in the room.
Maura told me, “The more light you had in an age of no electric lights, meant that you had a lot of money. Tin ceilings, mirrored sconces, and table silver all added to the reflected light.”
Three naturalistic Dutch forks from Maura's collection, with the bugs, leaves and roots. A favourite is her fork on the far left which features either a mermaid or a figurehead from the prow of an old ship.
While mango forks were also made in Germany, Spain, France, Russia, Austria, Mexico, Cuba and the US, they tended to be fairly utilitarian looking. The Dutch forks, however, were highly decorative. Some feature windmills or have very ornate handles. Some include detailed embossed picture above the tines. Mine shows a scene that looks a man sitting in a chair, possibly being waited on – or does he have his booted foot on the table?
Beetroot servers - the next hot collectible? An advertisement from The Argus, Melbourne, November 30, 1939.
As an aside, Maura told me she loves trading with Australians. “In the book I mention Australia as having the nicest eBayers on the planet.” And it seems Australia is a good source for beetroot servers – “table items so uniquely Australian. We do not have them here.”
Maybe they’re a Down Under thing as we have them in New Zealand, too. Probably our 20th century penchant for sliced beetroot with malt vinegar as a summer salad?
But back to the mango fork. How is it used?
In Victorian and Edwardian dining, the mango served was held by the fork’s middle tine piercing the seed and then the diner could use a knife to cut pieces of the fruit or a spoon to scoop the fruit out with, using the other hand.
In Mexico, tourists are sold stainless steel forks with the mangoes already attached to them, peeled and cut to look like flowers, said Maura. “They walk around eating the fruit while holding the forks upright like large lollipops. I am told by a few returning vacationers that some entrepreneurs/street vendors in Mexico are skipping the forks altogether, and selling the floral-looking mangoes attached to sticks, for eating in the same manner.”
Nowadays simple mango forks are more readily available and cooks use them for prepping mangoes. They cut a piece off the end of the mango and push the fork in so the long tine goes into the pit. As, the following video shows, they make a few longitudinal cuts in the skin which can then be easily peeled off. Then they slice the cheeks off the fruit or make a series of cuts then remove the flesh in chunks. And no one is left chasing a slippery mango all over the chopping board.
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What an interesting looking fork! At first, I was kinda scared of it. I wouldn’t want to eat with it. But when I saw the video, I finally saw how it works. I wouldn’t be using it personally, but I think I’d like to collect them for art. They put great designs on these forks unlike in regular forks.
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