The fork is much older than the habit of eating with one. Forked tools for cooking and carving go back to the ancient world, and by the end of the first millennium the wealthy of the Byzantine Empire were using small table forks. In Western Europe, though, most people ate with a knife, a spoon and their fingers for a very long time. The fork caught on first in Italy in the later Middle Ages, then spread north slowly, meeting mockery, suspicion and even moral outrage along the way. In England it became an everyday object only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Before the fork: knives, spoons and clean fingers
A medieval feast in Western Europe could be magnificent without a single fork on the table. Diners often brought their own knife, which they used both to cut and to spear. Spoons were for pottage and sauces. Everything else went to the mouth by hand, sometimes from a trencher, a thick slice of stale bread that served as a plate and soaked up the juices.
That did not mean anything went. The courtesy books of the period are full of rules about hands: wash before eating, use only your fingertips, do not lick your fingers, do not dig too deep into the shared dish. Good manners meant clean hands, not cutlery.
Forks did exist in kitchens and at the carving table, where a big two-pronged fork held a joint steady. By the end of the Middle Ages, some wealthy households also owned small forks for sticky sweetmeats and preserves. But to most Europeans, a fork for everyday eating would have looked faintly ridiculous.
A golden fork in Venice
The most famous early fork belongs to a Byzantine noblewoman who married into Venice's ruling family around the year 1000. According to the churchman Peter Damian, she would not touch her food with her fingers. Her servants cut it up for her, and she lifted it to her mouth with a little two-pronged golden fork. Damian presented this as shocking vanity, and when she later died of a terrible illness, he held her fate up as divine punishment.
This needs to be read with care. Damian was writing a moral lesson, not a neutral record, and later writers disagree about exactly which Venetian bride he meant, even giving her different names. What the story does capture is how strange, and how suspiciously luxurious, a personal fork looked to Western eyes at the time.
Italy, and the pasta question
If the fork had a first home in Western Europe, it was Italy. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, forks were turning up in wealthy Italian households. By the sixteenth century, well-to-do Italians used them as a matter of course, and some carried a personal set of knife, fork and spoon in a case.
Why Italy? Wealth, trade with Byzantium and fashion all played a part. Many historians also point to pasta. Long, slippery strands served hot in sauce are hard to eat with the fingers, and a pointed tool that can gather them up makes obvious sense. The theory is satisfying and plausible, but, as with a lot of food history, it is easier to suggest than to prove.
Mocked in France, marvelled at in England
North of the Alps, the fork had a mixed reputation at best. It is often said that Catherine de' Medici brought forks to France when she married the future Henri II in 1533. The claim is popular, but the evidence for it is thin. The ridicule is better documented. A French satire published in 1605 mocked the courtiers of Henri III, with their elaborate manners, for eating with forks and struggling to get the food to their mouths.
England's most enthusiastic early report came from Thomas Coryat, a traveller who made his way to Venice and back in 1608, much of it on foot. In his travel book, Coryat's Crudities, published in 1611, he described Italians holding their meat with a little fork while they cut it, because they could not bear anyone touching the shared dish with their fingers. He wrote that he kept up the habit after he came home. His friends, the story goes, nicknamed him furcifer, a Latin joke that means "fork-bearer" but also "rascal".
Even so, the fork caught on in England only gradually. It spread among the wealthy during the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth it was becoming an ordinary part of a well-laid table.
From two prongs to four
Early table forks usually had two straight tines, good for spearing and holding but useless for anything loose. As the fork took on more work, its shape changed. Forks with three and then four tines, slightly curved so they could scoop as well as spear, spread during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by the nineteenth the four-tined fork was the norm. The table knife changed too. With a fork to do the spearing, knives no longer needed sharp points, and rounded blades became common.
Industry did the rest. Steel cutlery from Sheffield, and from the 1840s electroplating, which gave cheaper metal a thin coat of silver, put matching knives, forks and spoons within reach of ordinary households. By Victorian times, the fork on the dinner table seemed to have always been there.
It is worth remembering that this is only one tradition. Chopsticks have been used in China for thousands of years, and in much of the world eating with the hand, done well, is a refined skill. The fork did not win out in Europe because it was better. It won because of fashion, class and several centuries of patience.
Pasta that loves a fork: making it well at home
If pasta helped the fork conquer Italy, the least we can do is cook pasta that behaves on one. The secret is a sauce that clings to the pasta instead of pooling underneath it.
- Use plenty of well-salted water. Salt it until it tastes pleasantly seasoned, and stir in the first minute so the strands do not stick together.
- Save the cooking water. Scoop out a mugful before draining. It is full of starch, and a splash of it is what binds sauce and pasta together.
- Finish the pasta in the sauce. Drain it a minute before it is done, then toss it in the pan with the sauce and a little cooking water over the heat until the sauce turns glossy and coats every strand. A watery sauce slides off a fork, but an emulsified one stays put.
- Never rinse. Rinsing washes off the starch that helps the sauce cling.
- Take cheese sauces off the heat. For cacio e pepe, let the pan cool for a moment before adding the grated cheese and cooking water. Otherwise the cheese clumps instead of melting into a cream.
- Twirl small. Catch just a few strands, then turn the fork against the curve of a shallow bowl. Most Italians twirl spaghetti without a spoon, and the whole art is a neat, small mouthful.
The Vegetarian Kitchen is full of pasta that is made for a fork. Start with the Spaghetti al Pomodoro with Basil and the Spaghetti Aglio e Olio with Chilli. Once you have the emulsion down, try the Cacio e Pepe with Vegetarian Pecorino-Style Cheese, and save the Fresh Egg Pasta Dough with Tagliatelle for a slow weekend. You can find more spaghetti recipes in the finder, and our Mediterranean kitchen starter guide explains how to stock a pantry that keeps dishes like these within easy reach.
Questions people ask
Who invented the fork?
No single person. Forked tools for cooking and serving are ancient, and the wealthy of the Byzantine Empire were using small table forks by around the year 1000. Italy was the first part of Western Europe to adopt them widely.
When did people in England start using forks?
Thomas Coryat described Italian forks in 1611. Forks then spread slowly among wealthy English households during the seventeenth century and became ordinary on English tables during the eighteenth.
Why did early forks have only two prongs?
They developed from kitchen and carving forks, which were designed to hold meat steady while it was cut. Extra tines, and a gentle curve for scooping, came as the fork became an eating tool.
Is it rude to use a spoon with spaghetti in Italy?
Not rude, but unusual for adults. Most Italians twirl spaghetti with a fork alone, against the side of a shallow bowl. Using a spoon is fine for children, or while you are learning.