HISTORY OF THE FORK
The Art of the Table
by Suzanne Von Drachenfels
"It is coarse and ungraceful to throw food into the mouth as you would toss
hay into a barn with a pitchfork." Anonymous
The word fork comes from the Latin 'furca' for "pitch fork." The two-prong
twig was perhaps the first fork. In Egyptian antiquity, large forks made of
bronze were used at religious ceremonies to lift sacrificial offerings. One of
the earliest dinner forks is attributed to Constantinople in 400 A.D.; it can be
seen in the Dumbarton Oaks collection in Washington, D.C. By the seventh
century, small forks were used at Middle Eastern courts; one such fork, a
small, gold, two-pronged tool, came to Italy in the eleventh century in the
dowry of a Byzantine princess who married Domenico Selvo, a Venetian
doge. After witnessing the princess use the fork, the church severely
censured her, stating that the utensil was an affront to God's intentions for
fingers. Thereafter the fork disappeared from the table for nearly 300 years.
In England the fork was slow to gain acceptance because it was considered a
feminine utensil. The exception was the 'sucket' fork, a utensil used to eat
food that might otherwise stain the fingers, such as "a silvir forke for grene
gynger" noted in an inventory taken in 1523 of Lady Hungerfords effects.
The sucket fork was wrought with two prongs at one end of the stem and a
bowl at the other. The fork end was used to spear food preserved in thick,
sticky syrup, such as plums and grapes, and the spoon end to convey the
syrup to the mouth.
When Catherine de Medici married Henry I in 1533, her dowry included
several dozen dinner forks wrought by Benvenuto Cellini, the great Italian
silversmith. The fork began to gain acceptance in Italy by the late sixteenth
century, a period when upper-class Italians expressed renewed interest in
cleanliness. However, the French court considered the fork an awkward,
even dangerous, utensil, and the nobility did not accept it until the
seventeenth century when protocol deemed it uncivilized to eat meat with
both hands. The way to use the fork remained a mystery, and many
sophisticates, notably King Louis XIV, continued to eat with fingers or a knife.
In 1608, Thomas Coryate, son of the Rector of Odcombe, took the "grand
tour" of Europe, and on his return published a narrative that included the
Italian custom of eating with a fork. Thereafter, Coryate's friends jokingly
called the young traveler Furciferus, "Pitchfork."
"I observed a custome in all those Italian Cities and Townes through which I
passed that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels, neither
doe I think that any other nation of Christendome doth use it, but only Italy.
The Italian, and also most strangers that are cormorant in Italy, does alwaies
at their meales, use a little fork when they cut the meate . . . their forkes
being for the most part made of iron or steel, and some of silver, but these
are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is because the
Italian cannot endure by any means to have his dish touched by fingers,
seeing that all men's fingers are not alike cleane. Hereupon I myself thought
to imitate the Italian fashion by this forke cutting of meate, not only while I
was in Italy, but also in Germany, and often-times in England since I came
home."
Thomas Coryate, ‘Coryat's Crudities’ (1611)
The modern table setting is attributed to Charles I of England who in 1633
declared, "It is decent to use a fork," a statement that heralded the
beginning of civilized table manners. But it wasn't until almost a century
later that the fork gained acceptance among the lower class. In England, the
acceptance of the fork encouraged preparation of continental recipes, such
as 'olios' from Spain, a dish made with stewed meat taken with a fork as
opposed to mashed food eaten from the blade of a knife. Because the
average family owned a limited number of forks, historians suggest that the
service of sherbet midway through a meal gave the servants time to wash
the forks used earlier on.
The first dinner forks were made with two flat prongs. The earliest two-prong
fork to bear an English hallmark and engraved with a coat of arms dates to
1632 and is attributed to the Earl of Rutland. It can be seen today in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In the seventeenth century, fork tines
were made of case-hardened steel and were fast to wear down. To promote
utensils with longevity, early fork tines were extra long in length and made
with sharp pointed tips.
But when it came to spearing certain foods, such as peas and grains, the
widely spaced two-prong fork was impractical, and between the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the tines increased in number from two to three
and then to four. Moreover, from the late seventeenth century to the mid-
eighteenth century, the profile of the fork changed from flat to slightly
curved, a shape that accommodated a scoop of soft food, such as peas. But
three- and four-prong forks were slow to reach North America, where people
continued to eat from a knife blade food that was difficult to spear with a
two-prong fork, such as mashed potatoes and gravy.
The way to use the dinner fork remained a mystery well into the eighteenth
century. Joseph Brasbridge, a retail silversmith in Fleet Street, wrote of his
confusion in a customer's home, "where the cloth was laid with a profusion of
plate.... I know how to sell these articles, but not how to use them."
The New York Ladies' Indispensable Assistant, published in 1852, gave
general advice on eating with a fork, knife, and spoon:
"If silver or wide pronged forks are used, (for fish), eat with the fish
fork in the right hand—the knife is unnecessary. . . . If possible, the
knife should never be put into the mouth at all, let the ledge be turned
down. . . . The teeth should be picked as little as possible, and never
with fork or fingers. . . . Eat peas with a dessert spoon; and curry also."
In the nineteenth century, mass production and the invention of the
electroplating process made silver forks affordable to a rising middle class
who wished to emulate the nobility and eat with forks made for specific
foods, such as berries, birds, cake, cold meat, cucumbers, fish, ice cream,
lettuce, lobster, oysters, pickles, salad, sardines, shellfish, strawberrys,
souffle, terrapin, tomatoes, and to pass sliced bread at the tea table.
Although fork handles were normally made of silver or silver plate, in the
nineteenth century organic materials were also used, such as bone, mother-
of-pearl, and ivory (the latter often tinted green). Fork tines were shortened
and closer together, and remain so today. No longer did fingers touch food,
except to pick up small fruit, such as grapes. Nor did servants wash forks
during a meal for use with another course.
Today, depending on need, a set of flatware may contain five forks: dinner
fork, fish fork, luncheon fork, salad or dessert fork, and seafood fork. But the
collector may amass specialized forks—for eating lobster, fruit, dessert, ice
cream, pastry, strawberries, snails, and oysters—from antique shops and
specialty stores.
The shapes of the fork tines accommodate particular foods. Forks wrought
with long tapered tines, such as a dinner fork, are made to spear thick
morsels of food, such as steak. Forks with a wide left tine and an optional
notch, such as a salad fork, fish fork, dessert fork, and pastry fork, provide
extra leverage when cutting food that normally does not require a knife.
Forks with curved tines, such as the oyster fork, are made to follow the
shape of the shell.
