Feasting daggers - A Tod Cutler advertorial! - YouTube

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.