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Assorted forks. From left to right: dessert fork; relish fork; salad fork; dinner fork; cold cuts fork; serving fork; carving fork

In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from the 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.

History

Bronze forks made in Persia during the 8th or 9th century.

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] Conversely, similar forks has 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]

The introduction of the fork to Western Europe, according to theologian and cardinal Peter Damian,^[8] was by Theophano Sklereina, wife of Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, who at an Imperial banquet in 972 nonchalantly produced one, astonishing her Western guests.^[9] 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 forks three spikes proved better suited to gathering the noodles.^[10][11] 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, ^[12] only by the 16th century, when they had become part of Italian etiquette, did forks enter into common use in Southern Europe,^[13] gaining some currency in Spain,^[14] 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.^[15] Some writers of the Roman Catholic Church expressly disapproved of its use, St. Peter Damian seeing it as "excessive delicacy":^[11] It was not until the 18th century that the fork became commonly used in Great Britain,^[16] although some sources say that forks were common in France, England and Sweden already by the early 17th century.^{[17][18][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.^{[citation needed]}

Types of fork

This section contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles. (January 2017)

An ice cream fork from the early 20th century

Carving knife and carving forks.
Note folding fork guards.^[19]

Carving fork from 1640.

Right handed pastry fork with widened left tine.

Two-pronged wooden Chip forks

• Asparagus fork


• Barbecue fork


• Beef fork: A fork used for picking up meat. This fork is shaped like a regular fork, but it is slightly bigger and the tines are curved outward. The curves are used for piercing the thin sliced beef.


• Berry fork


• Carving fork: A two-pronged fork used to hold meat steady while it is being carved. They are often sold with carving knives or slicers as part of a carving set.


• Cheese fork


• Chip fork: A two-pronged disposable fork, usually made out of sterile wood (though increasingly of plastic), specifically designed for the eating of french fries (chips) and other takeaway foods. From 7.5 to 9 cm long. In Germany they are known as Pommesgabel (literally "chip fork") and "currywurst fork".


• Cocktail fork: A small fork resembling a trident, used for spearing cocktail garnishes such as olives.


• Cold meat fork


• 
  Crab fork: A short, sharp and narrow three-pronged or two-pronged fork designed to easily extract meat when consuming cooked crab.


• 
  Dessert fork (alternatively, pudding fork/cake fork in Great Britain): Any of several different special types of forks designed to eat desserts, such as a pastry fork. They usually have only three tines and are smaller than standard dinner forks. The leftmost tine may be widened so as to provide an edge with which to cut (though it is never sharpened).


• Dinner fork


• Extension fork: A long-tined fork with a telescopic handle, allowing for its extension or contraction.


• Fish fork


• 
  Fondue fork: A narrow fork, usually having two tines, long shaft and an insulating handle, typically of wood, for dipping bread into a pot containing sauce


• Fruit salad fork: A fork used which is used to pick up pieces of fruit such as grapes, strawberries, melon and other varies types of fruit.


• Granny fork


• Ice cream fork: A spoon with flat tines used for some desserts. See spork.


• Knork


• Meat fork


• Olive fork


• Oyster fork


• Pastry fork


• Pickle fork: A long handled fork used for extracting pickles from a jar, or an alternative name for a ball joint separator tool used to unseat a ball joint.^[20]


• Pie fork


• Relish fork


• Salad fork: Similar to a regular fork, but may be shorter, or have one of the outer tines shaped differently. Often, a "salad fork" in the silverware service of some restaurants (especially chains) may be simply a second fork; conversely, some restaurants may omit it, offering only one fork in their service.


• Sardine fork


• Spaghetti fork: A novelty fork with a metal shaft loosely fitted inside a hollow plastic handle. The shaft protrudes through the top of the handle, ending in a crank, that allows the metal part of the fork to be easily rotated with one hand while the other hand is holding the plastic handle. This supposedly allows spaghetti to be easily wound onto the tines. Electric variations of this fork have become more prevalent in modern times.


• 
  Sporf: A utensil combining characteristics of a spoon, a fork and a knife


• 
  Spork: A utensil combining characteristics of a spoon and a fork.


• Sucket fork: A utensil with tines at one end of the stem and a spoon at the other. It was used to eat food that would otherwise be messy to eat such as items preserved in syrup. The tine end could spear the item, while the other end could be used to spoon the syrup.^[21]


• Tea fork


• Terrapin fork: A spoon with flat tines used for some soups. See spork.


• Toasting fork: A fork, usually having two tines, very long metal shaft and sometimes an insulating handle, for toasting food over coals or an open flame

See also

• Fork etiquette


• Knife


• Spoon


• Spork


• Table setting

References

Further reading

• 
  Petroski, Henry (1992), The evolution of useful things, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-6797-4039-1
  

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fork.

Look up fork in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• 
  Cutlery of the Middle Ages and Renaissance Forks from the Greco-Roman era to the 17th century

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