FACT: the fork is a relative newcomer to the dining table

The history of the fork is actually quite a journey. Here are the highlights…

It was through the account of a visit to Italy in Thomas Coryat’s 1611 travelogue where the dining fork was introduced to british society. Oddly, he was mocked for it. He even got the nickname “Furcifer”. (latin for fork-bearer) But, the seed was planted, and fork use slowly spread through the upper-class in England. Forks were a display of wealth, made ornately in fine metals. In 1633 King Charles I made a royal decree, “It is decent to use a fork,” and with that the practice of eating with one’s hands started a steep decline.

Backing up a bit, a whirlwind tour of how the fork made it to England. It was spotted in Italy, where the fork had made a huge comeback in the late 1500s. A comeback from what? Basically, it was banished 500 years earlier. You see, the fork came to Italy with a Bynatine princess in the 11th century, and when seen using it, the church got in a huff saying it was an insult to God’s intention for fingers. Before that, the fork came from more-enlightened Bynantine dinner tables where it was in fairly popular use (among the rich folks) back to the 7th century. The first recorded use of the fork at a dinner table is traced back to 400 A.D. in Constantinople (now Instanbul, was Constantinople, but now it’s Istanbul), buuuuuut, even before that the two-pronged fork was used in preparing and cutting food in the kitchen way back to the time of the Greeks. (Note: Greeks still exist, but you know what I mean) Annnnnd there’s even evidence of a fork-like tool used by the ancient Egyptians for holding a sacrifice to the gods, which was really just a big ol’ barbeque where everybody went home hungry except the guy who never showed up.

Whew! So, back to England and the story of forks becoming the final member of the everyday utensil trio…

So the king was like “Yo, forks are cool” and everybody was like “awesome!” and they started making them in England. Then they were like, “My mashed potatoes keep falling through the two tines, dawg!” Thus the fork evolved into the four-tine model we are familiar with today, and about the same time (late 1700s) manufacturing processes made the fork affordable for the middle class to imitate nobility in using the fork, and the rest is history. (Actually, all that other stuff was history, too.)

• Source: http://www.foodreference.com/html/art-history-fork-729.html
• Source: http://www.hospitalityguild.com/History/history_of_the_fork.htm

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