“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.” Oscar Wilde

The fork is the most recent addition to our cutlery arsenal. Although the Ancient Greeks are said to have used two-pronged forks and the fork was certainly in use in the Byzantine Empire in the early centuries AD, it took a long time to wend its way northwards. The Italians were the first Europeans to adopt this useful implement and it is said that Catherine de Medici introduced forks to the French  in the mid 16th-century court of Henri II. Eventually it founds its way to northwards and, ultimately, to the British Isles where it began to feature in accounts of dining habits in the early 17th century.

In 1609 the British traveller Thomas Coryat, who had encountered forks in Italy and was very impressed by them was much mocked for his enthusiastic appraisal of the fork-wielding habits of the Europeans: “The Italian…doe alwaies at their meales use a little forke when they cut their meat [and if] anyone should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate with his fingers from which all at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the lawes of good manners.” The fork prevailed and by 1631 the playwright Ben Jonson was celebrating the fork in the following words:

“The laudable use of forkes,
Brought into custome here, as they are in Italy,
To the sparing o’ Napkins.”

Ben Jonson, The Devil is an Ass, 1631

In its early days in Britain the fork was seen very much as an upper-class affectation, or something that was the preserve of the effete and the dandyish. For centuries it had been customary to eat with the hands. Food was served on slabs of bread, called trenchers, and if necessary, knives were used to cut up meat, which was then eaten with the fingers; spoons were also occasionally deployed. There was much dipping into communal serving dishes with shared implements or fingers and very little regard for food hygiene. As people became more aware of contagion, a fear that was probably fanned the Great Plague of London in the 1660s, they began to take a more circumspect attitude towards shared eating. Wealthier people invested in their own silver or gold forks, which they brought with them when dining out (they were expensive, and hosts weren’t expected to provide them for guests). The fork had arrived. 

Initially, forks were crude and double pronged, useful for skewering food, but hard to manipulate. By the18th century they had acquired one or two extra tines and a curved bowl shape. By this point the custom of eating with the knife in the right hand and the fork (with the tines pointing downwards) in the left was evident all over Europe. Forks arrived in the USA later (probably not until the 18th century) and the Americans evolved a different fork etiquette, cutting up their food with the knife in the right hand and fork in the left at the outset, then discarding the knife, and holding the fork in the right hand, tines upward, to convey food to the mouth. This eating method reflects that the fact that for much of their early history, Americans were using knives and spoons.

Forks really began to take off with the advent of silver-plating in the mid-19th century Most utensils before the 18th century were made of silver – the metal that reacts the least with food – but silver is rare, and therefore expensive. It was possible to mass-produce affordable cutlery, and the Victorians really began to push dining accessories in new directions – specialist forks included oyster forks, lobster forks, salad forks, terrapin forks, berry forks, lettuce forks, sardine forks, pickle forks, fish forks, and pastry forks. The upwardly mobile middle classes delighted in the consumer choice, purchasing vast ‘canteens’ of specialist cutlery designed for every possible dining eventuality. At the same time dining etiquette became more and more refined and any self-respecting Victorian diner was expected to know how to wield a vast panoply of equipment.

A Fishy Business

For most of the 19th century, forks reigned supreme when it came to eating fish. It was customary to eat fish with a silver fork (which didn’t affect the subtle flavour), either with the aid of a piece of bread or – if necessary – with the assistance of a second fork.

But then, in the 1880s, the ever-enterprising cutlers invented the fish knife and fork. This set comprised a wide-bladed knife with a curved, sharp edge (useful for lifting fish off the bone), with a matching fork that was smaller than the usual table fork. Their handles were often made of ivory and decorated with pescatarian motifs.

Some members of the aristocracy looked down their noses at these new-fangled implements and regarded them as irredeemably vulgar. But despite the contumely, fish knives and forks were enthusiastically adopted. However, they are now no longer an indispensable part of most people’s dining equipment, and these days many of us attack our fish with our ordinary knives and forks (the single or double fork technique is rarely seen).

Fork Etiquette

It is still considered customary to eat with a knife and fork in the right and left hand respectively. Traditional manners dictate that the fork is never turned over and used as a shovel and generations of British schoolchildren have been taught the ingenious trick of using the knife to squash recalcitrant food on to the fork (sometimes with the assistance of more pulpy ingredients, such as mashed potatoes). Peas have always been a particular challenge.

But dining habits have changed greatly since the Victorian era and the food we eat now encompasses dining traditions from around the world. We are enthusiastic consumers of spaghetti, noodles, rice and curry. We happily use chopsticks to eat Chinese or Japanese food, or spoons and forks to eat Thai dishes. We discard knives altogether when served a dish of spaghetti or rice with a curry sauce. In these situations, right-handed people who are using a fork on its own often transfer it to their stronger right hand, something our ancestors would never do, but which has now become universally acceptable.

It is still helpful, when you have finished your meal, to place your knife and fork (or fork alone) in the six o’clock position on your plate, with the tines facing upwards and the handle pointing towards you. This indicates to your waiter, host or dining partner that you have finished and that the dish can now be cleared away.