Its usage as a tool for preparing and serving food continued to be practiced in eastern parts of Roman Empire, which later become Byzantine Empire. Since 4th century BC, fork managed to became common on the tables of Byzantine high class and by 9th century it traveled to Persia where it started being used in elite circles under the name " barjyn ".
This kind of expansion slowly enabled the fork to became commonplace in the Eastern Europe and Middle East, finally becoming integral part of eating utensils by 10th century. The modern work for fork comes from the Latin work " furca " which means " pitchfork ".
While Eastern Europe and Middle East enjoyed the comfort and usability of forks for majority of so called Middle Ages, the rest of central and western Europe still used hands as a primary means of eating. With abundance of metal in circulation, higher circles of population held tradition for every male person to carry one or two small pointy knives that were used to cut meat and as a simple "spear" for piercing the food and carrying it from plate to mouth.
This tradition however was only practiced by wealthy males which were obliged to cut the food for nearby women at the table , and the majority of poorer population continued to eat without the help of knives or forks by then, wooden or metal spoons were commonplace.
Sadly, the influence of those two women was not enough to ensure the popularity of fork, and for the next years Europe continued to mostly ignore it. Are you ready to learn even more about utensils? Find a friend or family member and check out the following activities:. Can't we all get along? Both of you are so important for eating food. We love you both! It sure is our utensil of choice, that's for sure. Thanks for checking out this Wonder with us, The Fork!
That's super great, Pee Wee! Can you make the secret word of the day "forks" sometime? We like a good, clean fork too, j. But sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures! Maybe you should search things you don't know, like What was the first video game system or how long can food last there is lots of things that you can do on this website my teacher showed us this cool website.
Thanks for having our back, The Fork! We are so glad that you enjoy asking questions and learning more with us at Wonderopolis! But it is a great website. Fun and good to learn on. Thanks for being awesome! Sorry to hear that, popo! What is something you do like? There's a chance we might have a Wonder about it! Sorry you didn't enjoy this Wonder, nnhyvhgfyf. Perhaps you can find one you like by clicking here. Those are great questions, Louis!
We hope you'll do some extra digging to find out how hybrid utensils came about! You can search online or at your local library! Thanks for commenting, Jsndmajsn. Historians do not know of a certain person who invented the fork.
We do know that 2-pronged forks were used in ancient Greece a few thousand years ago and have been found in ancient Egypt and China. We hope you enjoyed exploring the fork's past! Thanks for asking, Isabelle! We'll try to clarify. The first spoons didn't have handles or stems to hold onto like we have today. At first, they were just the scoop part. Eventually a few thousand years ago people began attaching a bone, piece of wood, or another long piece onto the scoop to make the shape that we're familiar with today.
We are undergoing some spring clearing site maintenance and need to temporarily disable the commenting feature. Thanks for your patience. Drag a word to its definition. You have answered 0 of 3 questions correctly and your score is:. Want to add a little wonder to your website? Help spread the wonder of families learning together. We sent you SMS, for complete subscription please reply. Follow Twitter Instagram Facebook. When was the fork invented? Which common utensils are older than the fork?
What did people use before forks? Wonder What's Next? Wherever the wind may blow you, we hope you wind up in Wonderopolis tomorrow! Food was part of this strategy of spectacle. Catherine's eating methods, as well as foods as diverse as the artichoke and ice cream, went on display as she toured the country for more than a year in the s, drumming up support from the populace and devising etiquette that forced members of rival factions to eat together at her table.
At this time, most forks were two-pronged, and either hefty enough to hold down a cut of meat similar to what we would think of today as a carving fork or so dainty they were used primarily to eat sweets at the end of meals. Forks were used occasionally, but not every day.
Montaigne , writing in the s in a passage about the force of habit, mentions forks but says he rarely uses them. And they were still associated with sinister behavior. In an essay in Feeding Desire on the sexual politics of cutlery, Carolin Young notes that in , an anonymous allegorical novel about the courtiers of Henry III portrayed a mysterious island peopled by hermaphrodites, whose behavior is characterized by theatricality, artifice, and falsehood.
Sure enough, the hermaphrodites eat with forks, spilling more food than they manage to consume in their pursuit of the new and the unnecessary. In the time of Henry III, fork-owners would have been well-off, and most of them would have had one set of cutlery that traveled with them; there are numerous examples of forks and knives housed in carrying cases that could be slung over a shoulder or around a waist.
It wasn't until the late s and early s that people began to purchase multiple sets of silverware for their homes, which were just beginning to be equipped with rooms specifically set aside for dining. It was also around this time that forks with three and then four tines were made.
Even as the fork gained ground, it was not universally accepted. As Ferdinand Braudel notes in The Structure of Everyday Life , around the beginning of the 18th century, Louis XIV forbade his children to eat with the forks that their tutor had encouraged them to use. But by the middle of the century, the use of the fork had become sufficiently normal that rebukes were reserved for those who used forks incorrectly.
But they did not wish to omit any of our manners which were just becoming as fashionable among the Greeks as English manners are among ourselves, and I saw one woman throughout the dinner taking olives with her fingers and then impaling them on her fork in order to eat in them in the French manner.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the fork was firmly established on the French table and beyond, and the table had become a center of social life not just for the aristocracy, but for the newly established bourgeoisie.
In , a judge named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin published The Physiology of Taste: Or Mediations on Transcendental Gastronomy , and in it he paints a portrait of a world increasingly preoccupied with the culture of dining.
The pleasures of the table are known only to the human race; they depend on careful preparations for the serving of the meal, on the choice of place, and on the thoughtful assembling of guests.
Brillat-Savarin loved the rules of the table—the proper room temperature for a dinner party is 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, in case you're taking notes—but even he found contemporary manners a but fussy. He writes, in discussing life around , that it was "during this period that there was generally established more orderliness in the meals, more cleanliness and elegance, and those various refinements of service which, having increased steadily until our own time, threaten now to overstep all limits and lead us to the point of ridicule.
For the contemporary eater, Brillat-Savarin's words might come to mind when looking at some flatware patterns from the late 18th or early 19th centuries. Most utensils before the 18th century were made of silver—the metal that reacts the least with food—but silver is rare. The invention of silver-plating techniques, accompanied by the vigorous expansion of the consumer market, resulted in scores of forks for eaters of all classes and in scores of different fork types: oyster forks, lobster forks, salad forks, terrapin forks, berry forks, lettuce forks, sardine forks, pickle forks, fish forks, and pastry forks—just to name a few.
By , the multiplication of silverware had gotten so overwhelming that then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and the Sterling Silverware Manufacturers limited the number of separate pieces in any silverware pattern to This slide show details the many varieties of fork. You can also read more about the history of the utensil in " The Rise of the Fork. Around the turn of the last century, forks became very specialized.
There were forks for sardines, salad, ice cream—even bread. This bread fork hails from Sheffield, England. It has a mother-of-pearl handle and was made in These silver forks by Belgian designer Henry Clemens van de Velde date from They would have been used to pry lobster morsels out of the shell. This sardine fork hails from England, Sardine forks had extra tines, which helped keep the slippery sardines from falling off the utensil.
Around , Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed this silverware set for seating fish. Believe it or not, the spoon-shaped item on the right is a knife. This silver pastry fork was designed by Francis Higgins in London in
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