A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FORK

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."
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."
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 latte 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.
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