Silver Serving Utensils — What to Use on Your Thanksgiving Table [Kovels.com]

Enjoy learning how to collect and use valuable old silver serving pieces. Terry Kovel identifies a variety of specialized serving pieces and tells you their intended purposes so you can use the stuffing spoon or asparagus server your grandmother gave you.

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[Jennifer Andrews]

I love this! Shared on Facebook with my friends who love antiques ...

[Saltygal]

Thanks Terry, what a great collection, I"m going to keep my eyes on the lookout for a grape cutter, I love the grape leaf dish ( tray?) you had the grapes on , really makes a beautiful presentation

[lbf9002]

RE: toasting bread. When I was in college in the late 40's we had no toaster so I used a coat hanger with bread placed on it to toast over a little electric one eye burner I had in my room. Worked great and was cheap. Amazing what one can come up with when necessary.

[DonMI]

My grandmother used to hold the bread slices over the gas flame of a burner on her stove. People today don't realize that an electric toaster was an expensive luxury at one time.

[Gigi Ronzone-Gay]

Thank you! How nice of you to share this information. I have 2 of your books and plan to buy more. The best for researching antiques!

[poyye1]

I really don't think that you would want to put a metal fork into an electrical toaster :o(

[14wntr]

What a nice informative video, thanks for sharing some of your collection. I like to say that if you learn something everyday you will not die, so my death is now postponed again!

[Celia van Damme]

The toast fork was used to toast bread in front of an open fire, not to take slices out of an electric toaster. The cheese knife is for soft cheeses like Brie or Camembert that are 'ripe' and a bit runny and so you need the broad leaf-shaped form. We currently use one and they are quite common still today (at least in Europe). Usually you'll have a set, together with a curved knife with a fork-like end, used for hard cheese.

[Lana MacLeod]

I still can't figure out why they didn't just cut the grapes with scissors. That's what I do. And as for the toast fork, seems silly to make it out of metal if you're going to use it to take the toast out of the toaster. Can you say "electrocution"? Perhaps it was used to toast the bread over a fire?

[mel b]

Some online auction listed the cake item as a tool to get even slices of roast beef-I corrected him! lol :)