Who needs cutlery? Why food tastes better when eaten with your hands

When I first introduced my husband to my family, everyone welcomed him with open arms except my nine-year-old niece. "Why does Auntie have to marry this man?" she asked, before adding scathingly, "I bet he can't even eat with his hands."

Actually, my fiancé British Jew was adept at eating with his hands, but my niece's assumption that he couldn't maintain this most basic Bangladeshi cultural practice was apparently reason enough for her to withhold his approval . If he couldn't even handle that, how was he going to be good enough to marry his beloved aunt? During our first family meal together, she watched him curiously as he ignored the knife and fork laid out for him - the only cutlery on the table - and carefully tossed the steaming rice and yellow dal with his fingers . My father put a piece of fried fish on his future son-in-law's plate, a carefully selected piece taken from the stomach - or pethi - and usually reserved for children because it contains fewer bones. My mother reassured him that he could use a fork if he preferred, but boldly he persisted.

I watched with apprehension, mixed with pride, my future husband carefully probed the fish, pressing for the treacherous bones with his thumb and forefinger, as I had shown him how. He ate slowly and deliberately, following good hand-eating conventions, touching food only with his right hand. My parents were impressed – and reassured – that their new son-in-law was able to maintain this cultural practice. After our wedding, we were invited to dine with my many aunts and uncles across the country, as is the custom for newlyweds. At each dinner, my husband impressed his hosts (all of whom, without fail, had thoughtfully laid out cutlery for him) by eating skillfully with his hands.

In the West, this What was once considered taboo or ill-mannered has become commonplace: “finger food” exists as an entire category of culinary delights, and it is considered normal to eat certain foods with your hands. No one would look twice at someone eating a burger with their hands in a restaurant, and eating pizza with a knife and fork can even be considered a faux pas. But there remains a clear line; nobody eats chicken tikka masala and rice pilaf with their hands in their local curry house (except in a few darling restaurants in parts of east London, where special sinks are set up for Bangladeshi diners who want to wash up before and after participating in their plates of aromatic kacchi biryani). But for a time, eating with your hands was considered both subversive and exciting. Sylvia Plath, in The Bell Jar, described the liberation of using one's fingers to eat salad at the table: "I had discovered, after much extreme apprehension over what spoons to use, that if you do something wrong at the dinner table with some arrogance... no one will think you're ill-mannered or ill-mannered. They'll think you're quirky and witty."

It's no surprise that the fascination with the 'right' way to eat also goes the other way. My grandfather, who owned an Indo-Bangladeshi restaurant in Manchester in the 1970s, used to call knives and forks sifkhata - which literally translates to "chip cutter" - and was adamant that his children and grandchildren were learning to use them correctly, so that we weren't not fazed by the different rules about which hand to hold a fork in or what it looks like. ble a fish knife.

When I started at Oxford University, nearly a decade after my grandfather died, I I was once again grateful for his insistence, as I confidently navigated the place settings arranged on those large tables in the formal room. But just as there is etiquette for using knives and forks (best simplified as follows: start on the outside and work your way in), eating with your hands isn't free for everyone. It's widely practiced around the world, with cultures across the Middle East, Africa and Asia eating with their hands as a matter of course - but what's surprisingly common are the rules of etiquette that surround it.