Fork

In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from Latin: furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to hold them to cut with a knife or to lift them to the mouth.

Bone forks have been found in archaeological sites of the Bronze Age Qijia culture (2400–1900 BC), the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC), as well as later Chinese dynasties.[1] A stone carving from an Eastern Han tomb (in Ta-kua-liang, Suide County, Shaanxi) depicts three hanging two-pronged forks in a dining scene.[1] Similar forks have also been depicted on top of a stove in a scene at another Eastern Han tomb (in Suide County, Shaanxi).[1]

In Ancient Egypt, large forks were used as cooking utensils.[2]

In the Roman Empire, bronze and silver forks were used, many surviving examples of which are displayed in museums around Europe.[3][4] Use varied according to local customs, social class, and the type of food, but in earlier periods forks were mostly used as cooking and serving utensils.

Although its origin may go back to Ancient Greece, the personal table fork was most likely invented in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, where they were in common use by the 4th century.[5][6] Records show that by the 9th century in some elite circles of Persia a similar utensil known as a barjyn was in limited use.[7] By the 10th century, the table fork was in common use throughout the Middle East.[2] Chronographers mention the astonishment that the Byzantine princess Theophanu caused to the westerners, because she was using a fork instead of her hands when she was eating (she moved to the west because she married the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II).[8][9] In addition, according to Peter Damian, the Byzantine princess Maria Argyropoulina brought some golden forks to Venice, when she married Giovanni Orseolo, the son of the Doge Pietro II Orseolo in 1004. Damian condemned the fork as "vanity".[10]

By the 11th century, the table fork had become increasingly prevalent in the Italian peninsula before other European regions because of historical ties with Byzantium and, as pasta became a greater part of the Italian diet, continued to gain popularity, displacing the long wooden spike formerly used since the fork's three spikes proved better suited to gathering the noodles.[11][12] By the 14th century the table fork had become commonplace in Italy, and by 1600 was almost universal among the merchant and upper classes. It was proper for a guest to arrive with his own fork and spoon enclosed in a box called a cadena; this usage was introduced to the French court with Catherine de' Medici's entourage. Although in Portugal forks were first used around 1450 by Infanta Beatrice, Duchess of Viseu, King Manuel I of Portugal's mother,[13] only by the 16th century, when they had become part of Italian etiquette, did forks enter into common use in Southern Europe,[14] gaining some currency in Spain,[15] and gradually spreading to France. The rest of Europe did not adopt the fork until the 18th century.[5]

The fork's adoption in northern Europe was slower. Its use was first described in English by Thomas Coryat in a volume of writings on his Italian travels (1611), but for many years it was viewed as an unmanly Italian affectation.[16] Some writers of the Roman Catholic Church expressly disapproved of its use; St. Peter Damian seeing it as "excessive delicacy".[12] It was not until the 18th century that the fork became commonly used in Great Britain,[17] although some sources say that forks were common in France, England and Sweden already by the early 17th century.[18][19][dubious – discuss ]

The fork did not become popular in North America until near the time of the American Revolution.[2] The standard four-tine design became current in the early 19th century.[20]