Butterknife
The butter knife is a table knife intended for serving butter and applying it to bread and crackers ("spreading"). These utensils are also used for soft cheese, pâté, and moulded jelly when the more specialized knives are not available.
During the Victorian era, a multitude of knife-like implements were invented to handle butter. The Victorians distinguished:
a butter spreader (also individual butter knife of the 1890s) It usually has a rounded point, so it does not tear the bread. Some spreaders are wider at the blade end. At 5 to 6 inches in length, this knife is the smallest one on the table;
a serving butter knife (also master butter knife or simply "butter knife" in Victorian times) that was a dull-edged knife, usually sharp-pointed, often with a sabre shape, used only to serve out pats of butter from a central butter dish to individual diners' plates. These knives, dating back to the mid-18th century, were not used to spread the butter onto bread: this would contaminate the butter remaining in the butter dish when the next pat of butter was served. Rather, diners at the breakfast, the luncheon, and the informal dinner table used an individual butter knife to apply butter to their bread. At the end of the 19th century, the winter availability of fresh fruits in the United States greatly increased, reducing the need for pickle knives. As a result, some of these items were marketed as small master butter knives;
a drill-like butter pick that dates back to the times when the butter was served inside chilled earthenware, so a pick was needed to pierce the butter and pull it out of the pot. By the mid-18th century picks were mostly replaced by the butter knives;
a combination butter knife pick (see the illustration to the right).
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