Forks

I think most of us just take forks for granted; I mean forks that we use to eat with, not forks in the road, tuning forks, or forks on a bike or fork-lift trucks or any other fork, including places of that name. they are so useful and have lots of different uses  while eating or cooking. Forks can be used for stabbing, cutting, holding, taking food to the mouth, mashing, pushing food onto a spoon, scooping… and in the kitchen I always use a fork not a whisk for making scrambled eggs or omelets, and for mashing potato, and for whisking various things when I’m making cakes.

Fork like tools have been used for a very long time, maybe starting as kitchen utensils or even farm tools for lifting hay and straw (maybe as tridents? This is only my idea, I can’t see any evidence for it!) However it’s only since the late middle ages that anything like a fork has been used by diners – before that people used spoons and their own knives which they took everywhere with them when they were eating. The word fork comes from the Latin for pitchfork.

There is a lovely blog about forks here, with some interesting pictures:

http://www.neatorama.com/2014/04/14/The-Origin-of-the-Fork/

Forks have now proliferated into many different types; in fact just to sit down to eat  you might have anyone or several of these:

• carving fork (paired with a carving knife and a steel
• dessert/pudding fork
• dinner fork
• fish fork – also fish serving fork
• fruit fork
• ice-cream fork
• lobster fork
• lunch fork
• oyster fork
• pastry/cake fork
• pickle fork
• salad fork (although this would be used to serve salad rather than to eat with it)
• seafood fork
• snail fork
• strawberry fork
• toasting fork

The shapes of the fork vary according to use, and there maybe a different number of tines (the word tine by the way comes from Old English from Old German meaning point or pointed) different length or width of tines, different length and width of handle… the variety is infinite!!!

I’ve come across a lot of other forks… some I’ve never heard of, some I can’t really guess what they might be used for!

• Asparagus fork
• Barbecue fork
• Beef fork
• Berry fork
• Cheese fork
• Chip fork
• Cocktail fork
• Cold meat fork
• Crab fork
• Deli fork
• Fondue fork
• Granny Fork
• Knork – a combination knife and fork
• Meat fork
• Olive fork
• Pie fork
• Relish fork – maybe that’s what I would call a pickle fork
• Sporf – a combination spoon, fork and knife (useful for campers maybe?)
• Spork – a combination spoon and fork
• Tea fork
• Terrapin fork (do people really eat terrapins?)
• Extension Fork
• Spaghetti fork

I think that might be just enough on forks except the reason I was inspired to write about them. I was brought up in a very old-fashioned way, especially as regarding how we behaved at table. The table would be set with knife and fork, side knife, dessert spoon and fork. If there was ever a dessert then we would always have a fork as well as a spoon to eat it with.

My parents were very strict with how we used these implements and we never, never, never, used a fork in our right hands to scoop or to eat with… we just didn’t. In fact, my cousins have a saying ‘spoon ever, fork never’.The only time we ever used a fork in our right hand was if we were served cake and then it would be a small fork with two short broad tines. I know American people eat differently, and they do use the fork in their right hand, and loads of us do the same now… I do! However, up until maybe the sixties, this was the  British and European way of eating, fork only ever in left hand! This was highlighted in the film ‘The Great Escape’ when a couple of prisoners had escaped and were sitting at a cafe and the American one cut his food then transferred his fork to his right hand to eat. A German officer saw this and recognized him as an American.

I have been watching the new TV series Grantchester, set in 1950’s Cambridge; it is about a vicar and he is quite posh and definitely middle/upper class. The period details are fabulous, the clothes, the rooms, the cars… everything is wonderfully authentic… until I saw the vicar eating dinner… he cut his food then put his fork in his right hand and continued to eat… NO! NO! NO! A 21st century vicar would probably do this, but a 1950’s vicar? Never!