Author: Cilla Howe

Orders of the day, Volume 37, Issue 1, 2005

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In this modern age we all consider forks to be an important item on our dinner table. In fact, for some meals they are indispensable; how else would you eat pasta? But although cutlery in its most basic form has been with us since Stone Age man stopped tearing his food with his teeth and the discovery of fire meant that we had to find some way to get hot food and liquids into our mouths, forks as we know them were not used at the English table until the 17th century.

Kitchen forks can be traced back to the Greeks. Fairly large with two tines, they were used in the carving and serving of meat; the tines preventing the meat twisting whilst being carved. The inventory of property left by Henry VII included a case of 12 knives and a fork – the fork almost certainly used for carving or serving.

Forks had been used for eating sweetmeats on royal and noble tables since the 14th century, but they only became a major item of cutlery from the mid 17th century. Thomas Coryat of Odcombe near Yeovil spent five months travelling in Europe and published an account of their use in Italy in 1611. He claimed to be one of the first Englishmen to use forks and was ridiculed by his friends for this effeminate habit. However half a century later they were generally accepted, and by the 1660s sets of knives and forks were being made, the knife sporting a rounded end (for supporting the food on the fork), in contrast to the earlier point that had been necessary to spear meat from the dishes. In 1669 King Louis XIV of France banned pointed knives, both at the table and as weapons, insuring the predominance of blunt knives at the table.

(America didn't get forks until around 100 years later, but were supplied with the new, rounded end, knives from England. As they had no forks to push against and no pointed end to spear their food with, they began cutting up their food with the knife and then eating it with a spoon. When forks were eventually introduced, Americans continued with this way of eating, simply substituting a fork for a spoon. This is why they tend to eat with their forks in their right hands, the other way round from us.)

When first used at table, forks were not for transferring food to the mouth, but rather for lifting food from a sticky or staining sauce. The fork would then be shaken to remove excess sauce, and the food transferred to the mouth by the fingers. The Italians used the fork as a steadying tool instead of the hand when cutting meat from the main dish. They disliked the idea of many different, possibly dirty, hands on the meat. The cut portion was then transferred to the plate by the point of the knife. In 1617 Fynes Moryson observed “a custom in all those Italian cities through which I passed that is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels … The Italians do always at their meals use a little fork when they cut their meat … The reason for 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 clean”.

The earliest fork known to have been made in England is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It bears the crests of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland and his wife Frances. It is two-tined and squarish, made of silver, and bears the London hallmark for 1632-3. The tines are straight; the curve we are used to was introduced in France in the later part of the century when extra tines were added to better hold the food.

The first sets of knives and forks were made of silver or steel with ivory handles, and would have been very expensive at a time when many households were using the cheap metal pewter as a substitute for silver for domestic tableware. Silverware was in short supply, since much had been melted down to pay for the Civil War. When brightly polished, pewter closely resembled silver, but it was much softer. Just a moderately hard cut with a knife would score the surface quite deeply, so it was in need of constant maintenance to polish out marks, using fine abrasive sand. This troublesome operation could be avoided by using Delftware, a light biscuit-coloured pottery with a milky glaze.

However in many households wooden tableware was still in use, though at this time the square wooden trencher, with a large hollow for the meat and a small hollow for salt, was now being replaced by circular wooden plates or platters, and the fancy new forks would have been out of reach of the pocket of any but the wealthiest. So it would have been a knife with a pointed end and fingers, and a spoon used only for liquids like soup – not for your meat and two veg.

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) had plenty of knives. His diary makes a number of references to buying knives, but forks do not appear to be high on his priority list. As he makes so many references to the silverware he acquired we must assume that forks did not figure.

In 1669 a young Italian prince was sent on a tour of Europe “to eradicate his heart of an ill-fated passion”. He was accompanied by one Count Lorenzo Magalloti, who kept a full and wordy account of the trip. Magalloti laments the “great want of that neatness and gentility which is practised in Italy, for on the English table there are no forks”. After the forkless dinner “they dip the end of the napkin (into a finger bowl) and with this they clean their teeth and wash their hands”!!

And whilst on the subject of napkins, the late 16th century French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote, “I could dine without a tablecloth, but to dine in the German fashion, without a clean napkin, I should find very uncomfortable. I soil them more than the Germans or Italians, as I make very little use of either spoon or fork”.