Hello my friend,
Welcome to humorously dull history for sleep.
My name is Stephen Dalton and it is my hope that that as I tell you lots of different facts about particular periods in history tonight,
You find me so incredibly boring that you fall asleep very quickly.
And maybe.
.
.
Even with a smile upon your face.
It is humorous history after all.
Tonight I'll tell you.
The humorously dull history.
Of the four.
Yes,
The fork.
One of the most boring objects in your kitchen drawer.
Which somehow has a history.
Involving emperors,
Aristocrats,
Religion.
Table manners,
And a surprising amount of social judgment.
So,
Just before we get started.
.
.
Allow yourself to settle into this moment.
Leave the day that was behind.
Feel the support.
Of whatever you lie upon.
If your eyes aren't closed yet.
Allow them to close.
Whatever has been.
Has been.
It's history now.
Whatever will be.
Will be.
All you have is this moment.
And my voice.
So allow your curiosity to be a part of this pleasant experience as I tell you.
The humorously dull history of the four.
Part one.
In which humanity looks at its fingers.
And decides.
That's what I do.
For most of human history.
The table forth.
Did not exist.
And remarkably.
Civilization continued.
People built cities.
They developed racing.
They created religions.
Governments.
Mathematics.
And monumental architecture.
They traded across continents.
They looked at the stars.
And attempted to understand the universe.
Then dinner arrived.
And they use.
Their fingers.
Which,
When you think about it,
Is not completely unreasonable.
The human hand already comes with five naturally installed prongs.
They bend.
Stay gripped.
They can detect temperature.
They are permanently attached to you.
Which makes them extremely difficult to leave at a restaurant.
From a design perspective.
The fork was entering a market.
That already had a very strong competitor.
So,
We should resist the temptation to imagine everybody before the fork.
Sitting helplessly beside dinner.
Thinking.
There must be a better way.
There were already ways.
Humans had knives of various kinds for cutting food.
Long before anything resembling modern table cutlery.
Spoon-shaped utensils.
Are also extremely ancient.
Ancient Egypt,
For example.
As left us wooden.
Bone and ivory spoons.
Dating back thousands of years.
Although not every object we call a spoon.
Was necessarily used for eating.
Some were cosmetic.
Or ceremonial objects.
The spoon makes immediate sense.
There is liquid.
Your hand is bad as liquid.
You invent a tiny ball with a handle.
Problem solved.
The knife also makes sense.
There is something large.
You would prefer it to be smaller.
Knife.
Again.
Humanity can go home early.
But the fork solves a much more specific problem.
I would like to move this small solid thing.
From here to my mouth without touching it.
This is not quite the same level of emergency.
And for a very long time.
People simply did touch it.
In many ancient societies.
Food could be served in pieces that were easy to pick up.
Or eaten with bread.
Spoons.
Knives.
Were the hands themselves.
The exact customs varied enormously by place.
Period.
And social class.
Though there was never one universal ancient dining technique.
But the idea that a civilized meal.
Requires each person to have their own little metal fork.
Is surprisingly recent.
The Romans are useful here.
Because Romans had fork-like objects.
Actual Roman forks survive.
The Metropolitan Museum.
As a bronze two-pronged Roman fork.
From roughly the 2nd or 3rd century CE.
But the museum identifies it.
As a serving fork.
Probably used to take food from a dish.
Rather than as somebody's personal dinner fort.
That distinction matters.
Because humanity had already discovered.
Points on a stick,
Useful for food.
What it had not yet universally decided was points on stick.
Belong beside every plate.
There is an enormous conceptual distance.
Between those two ideas.
We still have this problem with kitchen equipment.
Someone invents a useful specialised object.
Years later.
It has somehow become compulsory.
At first.
This little tool is handy for opening avocados.
Five years later.
Sorry,
Why don't you own an avocado opener?
Cause I have a knife,
Barbara.
Rome even gives us something more exciting.
A third-century silver implement survives.
That combines a spoon at one end.
With a small fork at the other.
Yes.
The Romans had essentially produced.
8.
Spore.
Nearly 17 centuries before somebody at a motorway service station.
And did you one beside a container of potato salad?
The forked end of the Roman example.
Seems to have been more suited to picking food from a serving dish.
Than eating directly from your own plate.
But the basic object is wonderfully familiar.
This is one of those historical discoveries.
That makes technological progress.
Feel less impressive.
Modern world.
We have combined the spoon and fork.
Ancient Roman?
And yes,
We tried that too.
Modern world.
Ours is made of compostable plastic.
Ancient Roman.
Well,
Mine is made of silver.
Fair enough.
Even in Roman dining.
Individual forks were not standard equipment.
The Metropolitan Museum notes that knives,
Forks and spoons were not common on Roman dining tables.
And that people generally ate with their hands.
With small bowls available for washing fingers.
And suddenly.
The whole system makes more sense.
Because if you are imagining fingers covered permanently in dinner,
You are imposing a modern table.
Unto an ancient meal.
There could be washing.
Servants in wealthier households.
Napkins or cloths in various contexts.
Food.
Prepared in ways suited to the customs of the time.
Nobody necessarily felt that anything was missing.
That is one of the odd things about inventions.
Once an object becomes universal.
It becomes almost impossible to imagine the period before it.
Without assuming everybody was inconvenienced.
We look backward and think,
How did they cope?
They did not think they were coping.
They were just having lunch.
No Roman senator stopped halfway through a meal and stared sadly at his hand.
One day Marcus Yes?
Someone will fix this.
Marcus is fine.
Marcus has bread.
And there is another advantage to fingers that modern etiquette tends not to mention.
They are extremely precise.
Try picking up one olive with a fork.
Now try picking it up with your fingers.
One method involves two fingers.
The other involves chasing a small oily sphere around a plate.
While pretending this was your intention.
The fork is not victorious in every category.
Of course.
Fork-like tools existed for cooking too.
Long pronged implements are useful for handling meat over heat or lifting food.
And agricultural forks existed for completely different purposes.
The basic idea of a branching tool.
Is ancient and obvious.
This is worth remembering.
Because the table fork did not appear because somebody suddenly invented the pointy fork.
Human beings had encountered,
Points.
We were aware of them.
The innovation was taking a small fork-shaped implement and saying,
This is now part of personal table manners.
And thus took much longer.
In Europe.
Through much of the Middle Ages.
Fingers,
Knives and spoons remained the normal tools at the table.
The Metropolitan Museum.
Notes that forks were rare throughout the medieval period.
And only became standard table implements much later.
And food itself matters here.
A great deal of medieval European cooking involved potages,
Broths,
Stews,
And other dishes.
For which a spoon was perfectly adequate.
Meat could be cut with a knife.
Bread could help move food around.
Fingers could deal with pieces that were easy to pick up.
You did not need four separate pieces of cutlery and a small diagram.
Dinner was not yet an examination.
Today.
A formal place setting can contain enough metal to create mild anxiety before the starter arrives.
4.
Smaller for?
Another four.
Spoon.
Different spoon.
Knife.
Other knife.
Possibly something at the top,
Whose purpose will only become clear if Asparagus appears.
You sit down.
And immediately begin observing the people around you.
Which one are they using?
Excellent.
Follow Susan.
Susan appears confident.
This is how civilization survives.
But for most medieval diners.
The problem was much simpler.
You brought a knife,
Or one might be provided,
Depending on the setting.
Spoons existed.
And you possessed hands.
That was enough.
In fact,
Personal knives were so normal in parts of medieval and early modern Europe,
That diners often carried their own knife with them.
There is something appealingly direct about this.
Modern dinner invitation.
Can I bring anything?
No,
Just yourself.
Earlier version.
Bring yourself and the thing you eat with.
Imagine being invited to dinner now.
And arriving with your own cutlery roll.
Stephen,
Lovely to see you.
Thank you.
Where shall I put my fork?
Pause.
You're what,
Sorry?
I brought my own fork.
You are no longer simply a guest.
You have made a statement.
And yet,
The fork does begin appearing here and there.
Not everywhere.
Not all at once.
Not because civilization had suddenly realized fingers were disgusting.
It appears gradually.
Often among wealthy people and in specialised uses.
Small forks could be used for particular foods.
By the 14th century.
European references become more frequent.
Including forks used for fruit or sweet foods.
One reason given in historical inventories and scholarships is wonderfully practical.
Certain fruits could stain the fingers.
And this.
Finally.
Feels like the fork finding a problem worthy of itself.
We must transform dining forever.
These blackberries are annoying.
Many great inventions probably begin this way.
Humanity does not always stride majestically into the future.
Sometimes.
Somebody looks at their fingertips and says,
Oh for God's sake!
And picks up a tiny fork.
But even then,
The fork remained unusual enough in much of Europe to attract attention.
Which brings us to the point.
Were this extremely boring object.
Becomes unexpectedly controversial.
Because the four.
Will arrive at certain medieval tables.
Not merely as a utensil.
But as something foreign.
Something luxurious.
Something suspiciously refined.
And according to at least one very unimpressed churchman.
Something that perhaps God.
Had not intended us to need.
Which is an extraordinary amount of trouble for an object with two prongs.
Part two.
In which the fork becomes a moral problem.
By the beginning of the 11th century.
The fork has finally reached the point.
Where somebody can be offended by it.
This is progress.
Around 1004 or higher.
1005.
A Byzantine aristocrat named Maria Argiopoulina.
Married into Venice's ruling family.
She came from Constantinople.
Capital of the Byzantine Empire.
Where elite court culture could be considerably more elaborate.
Than what many Western Europeans were accustomed to.
And Maria reportedly brought with her a remarkable little object.
A golden fork.
Not a large carving fork.
Not something shared by everyone at the table.
Her own little fork.
Which he used to bring food.
To her mouth.
Today.
This would not register as behaviour.
A woman uses a fork.
Nobody contacts the authorities.
In 11th century Venice however.
This was apparently worth remembering.
A later account by the churchman Peter Damian.
Complains about a Byzantine noblewoman in Venice.
Who were so delicate.
That she would not touch food with her fingers.
But instead.
Had it cut into pieces.
And raised to her mouth.
With the small two-pronged golden implement.
The precise identification of the woman in the medieval sources is a little messy.
But the episode became associated.
With Maria and with Byzantine forcues in Venice.
And Peter Damien was not impressed.
To him.
This was part of a wider display of excessive luxury.
Which means that somewhere around a thousand years ago.
A fork was capable of communicating.
This woman.
Has gone too far.
Not jewels.
Not a palace.
Not servants.
She has introduced two small points at dinner.
Civilization is under threat.
And I love the scale of the objection.
Imagine discovering a new colleague eating lunch.
With an unfamiliar utensil.
And thinking.
I have concerns about her character.
What's she like?
Very pleasant.
Are it working?
Yes.
Honest?
As far as I know.
Pause.
But she uses a fork.
Hmm.
Say no more.
The story is often retold in an even more dramatic form.
With Maria's early death being interpreted by hostile moralists as divine punishment.
For her luxurious habits.
We should be a little cautious about turning that into a neat story of God Killed Woman,
Because four Medieval moral writing loved using the misfortunes of wealthy people.
As lessons about vanity.
And later retellings.
Have polished the episode considerably.
But the basic point is secure enough.
An elite Byzantine woman's fork use in Venice was remarkable.
Foreign.
And luxurious enough.
To attract criticism.
And this tells us something useful.
The fork was not rejected because Europeans were too stupid to understand it.
They understood perfectly well what it did.
The problem was.
.
.
Why are you doing that?
Your fingers already were.
Why introduce machinery?
We still react like this to certain objects.
Somebody produces a specialised banana slicer.
Everyone else.
Is a knife not available?
Then why does this exist?
The fork was for a while.
The Banana Slicer of Medieval Dining and yet.
It was not completely absent.
An 11th century manuscript from Monte Cassino in Italy.
Actually depicts two men at a table.
Using two pronged forks.
Were carving and eating.
This was not simply one eccentric Byzantine woman.
Arriving in Venice.
With strange equipment.
Forks were around.
They were simply Rare.
That is the stage we are at now.
The fork exists.
People have seen it.
Some people own one.
Most people do not particularly need one.
It is the medieval equivalent.
Of discovering in 2007.
That one friend owns an electric wine-opener.
Interesting.
Does this mean everyone will have one?
Probably not.
At least not yet.
Throughout the 13th century.
Table forks remained unusual in Western Europe.
References exist.
But they are scarce enough.
That when one appears in an inventory,
It can stand out.
Around 1300,
For example,
An inventory connected with the English King Edward I mentions a little fork made of crystal.
Crystal Fork.
Already the fork has managed to skip the stage.
Where everybody owns a cheap practical one.
And gone directly to.
Royal object you would be terrified to drop.
Your Majesty.
You're full.
Thank you.
Please be careful.
With the 4.
It is crystal.
Why?
Nobody knows.
Royalty has happened.
And during the 14th century.
References become more frequent.
Particularly in wealthy households.
Push again.
These were often not forks in the modern sense of the word.
Starter for it.
Main course for.
Dessert for it.
Fork you accidentally use first,
And then spend the rest of dinner wondering whether anybody noticed.
Small forks could be used for fruit,
Sweets and preserved foods.
One practical reason was that certain fruits,
And as mentioned earlier,
One of the great things about the fork.
Was its ability to prevent stains on the fingers.
By the later Middle Ages.
The fork begins slowly attaching itself.
To refinement.
Not necessity.
Refinement.
And this is important.
Because much of the fork's future success will come from exactly that.
Using one starts becoming a way of demonstrating manners.
Control.
Cleanliness.
Status.
Knowing what people at fashionable tables are doing.
This is where table manners become fascinatingly irrational.
A useful action gradually becomes a social signal.
There are thousands of things like this today.
You can drink wine from almost any clean container.
But places in a mug.
At a formal dinner.
And the conversation changes.
The liquid has not changed.
The grapes remain unaware.
But society has opinions.
The fork begins acquiring the same power.
The food reaches your mouth either way.
But now.
How it reaches your mouth.
You can tell other people something about you.
And Italy.
Becomes particularly important.
The wealthy courts and cities of the Italian peninsula.
Were deeply connected through trade with the Eastern Mediterranean and Byzantium.
Venice especially had long-standing political,
Commercial and cultural connections with Constantinople.
So it makes sense that table-forks would become more familiar there earlier than in many parts of northern and western Europe.
Still.
We should not imagine 14th century Italy.
As a country where everyone sits down.
With a modern place setting.
We are moving slowly.
Very slowly.
Which is appropriate.
It is a fork.
There is no need to rush.
For a long time,
The common form has two prongs.
Rather than the four we are used to now.
And two prongs are excellent for spearing something.
Less excellent for everything else.
Try eating peas with a two-pronged fork.
The peas will understand immediately.
That they have the advantage.
This early fork is closer to a delicate little spear.
Than to the broad food management platform sitting beside your plate today.
And the handles could be beautifully made.
Precious metals.
Ivory.
Decorative materials.
A fork might be a luxury possession.
Given as a gift.
Or listed among valuable household goods.
Which is another strange stage in its career.
Today.
If someone gives you one fork for Christmas,
The relationship needs examination.
Thank you.
It's a fork.
Silver.
Lovely.
Just the one.
In the medieval elite world,
One beautiful fork could actually be an object worth recording.
And,
As forks became more visible at Italian tables,
Travelers from elsewhere.
Began noticing the habit.
This will matter enormously in the next part.
Because fashions spread through imitation.
Someone visits another court.
They see a new behavior.
They return home.
Then they do the new behavior in front of everybody they know.
Which inevitably produces the historical sentence Oh,
He's doing that thing he picked up in Italy.
Every era has this person.
Travels once.
Comes home changed.
You know,
Actually,
In Florence,
They eat much later than we do.
Yes,
But we live in Ohio,
Michael.
But the Italians were gradually helping turn the fork from an exotic luxury into an actual dining utensil.
And over the next two centuries.
Something happens.
At the fore.
Desperately needs.
The food.
Changes.
Dining fashions change.
Table manners change.
And in Italy.
One particularly troublesome category of food.
Becomes increasingly prominent.
At elite tables.
Pasta.
Which means the little two-pronged object that had once been accused of unnecessary sophistication is about to encounter a plate of slippery noodles.
Finally.
A worthy opponent.
Part three.
In which Italy decides the fork is actually quite good.
By the 15th and 16th centuries.
The fork is no longer merely an eccentric little luxury.
Appearing here and there.
In Italy.
Especially among wealthier households.
It is becoming genuinely fashionable.
This does not mean every Italian suddenly owns one.
We are still talking first about courts.
Cities.
And people with money.
But compared with much of Northern Europe.
Italy is clearly ahead.
And one reason may simply be.
.
.
That Italian food gives the force.
More to do.
Pasta was already well established in parts of Italy.
And long slippery foods present an obvious difficulty.
If your current dining technology consists largely of fingers.
Spoon and knife.
Historians have often connected the growing popularity of table forks in Italy with their usefulness for eating noodles and other foods that are awkward to manage elegantly.
At last.
The fork has been wandering around Europe for centuries,
Waiting for a proper assignment.
Fine.
Sweet Meats.
Useful.
Buster?
Now we're talking.
There is a lovely inevitability to it.
Someone,
Somewhere.
Is trying to eat a strand of pasta elegantly.
Lips.
They try again.
It slips again.
Across the table.
Another person calmly picks up a fork.
History changes.
Nostrumatically.
Nobody blows a trumpet.
One person simply stops losing dinner onto their shirt.
And Italian forks themselves.
Were often still quite different from ours.
Two long prongs remained common.
Especially in earlier examples.
These were excellent for spearing something.
But not yet ideal for scooping or gathering food,
The way a modern four-tined fork does.
The broader,
Curved,
Four-pronged form develops later.
Imagine trying pasta.
With a very elegant little two-pronged spear.
It is better than nothing.
But there is still an element of negotiation.
Modern for?
I have the pasta.
Early fall.
I have made contact with the pasta.
Different level of confidence.
And then,
The fork starts traveling.
This is where aristocratic marriage becomes extremely useful.
To the history of cutlery.
In 1533.
The Fourteen-Year-Old Catherine de Medici left Florence.
To marry the future French king.
Henry II.
Catherine came from one of Italy's most famous families.
And later tradition.
Strongly connected her arrival.
With the spread of Italian dining habits at the French court.
Including forks.
The simple claim that Catherine single-handedly introduced the fork to France is probably too neat.
Forks were not completely unknown there.
But Italian court fashion.
Certainly helped make them more visible and prestigious.
This is how fashion often works.
Nobody wants these strange objects.
Then a sufficiently important person has won.
Certainly.
Actually.
I've always liked forks.
Oh you haven't.
Last year you said they were unnecessary.
That was a different fork.
Of course.
And France gives us another genuinely wonderful chapter.
A few decades later.
In 1574.
Henry III of France travelled through Venice on his way home from Poland to claim the French throne.
His visit was treated as an enormous state occasion.
Venice put on elaborate celebrations for him.
Including spectacular displays and banquets.
Henry encountered Phoenician table customs.
Including the four.
And he liked it.
This should not be controversial.
Man uses fork.
End of story.
Unfortunately.
Henry III already had political enemies and critics who mocked his court as overly refined and effeminate.
Is adoption of the fork.
Became part of that ridicule.
Contemporary and later satirical accounts.
Made fun of Henry and his favourites.
For using these delicate little utensils at meals.
Which means,
That by the 16th century masculinity had somehow become connected.
To how directly you touched your dinner.
Real man.
Fingers.
Suspicious man.
This is an extraordinary hill for a society to choose.
Imagine trying to explain it now.
Sorry,
Why don't you like him?
He seems soft.
What makes you say that?
He ate the pear with cutlery.
Right.
Alert the army.
And we should be careful not to take every mocking account literally.
Satirical writers exaggerated Henry's court deliberately.
One later story even describes courtiers struggling so badly with forks that food.
Supposedly fell everywhere.
But historians have pointed out.
That this comes from hostile parody.
Not a neutral restaurant review.
The ridicule itself matters.
Because it shows that the fork was doing something much bigger than moving food.
It had become.
A symbol.
Italian.
Foreign.
Fashionable.
Refined.
Possibly pretentious.
Possibly unmanly.
A tiny piece of metal.
Now has a personality.
We still do this with objects.
Someone drinks coffee from an ordinary mug.
Nothing.
Someone produces an elaborate handmade ceramic vessel with no handle.
Suddenly we know something about them.
Not necessarily accurately.
Thus we know.
And Venice itself seems to have become particularly associated with fork use.
During Henry III's visit.
One Contemporary Account.
Describes an extravagant display.
In which even the knives,
Forks,
Plates and napkins.
Were reproduced in sugar.
As part of the spectacle.
They were decorative rather than practical.
But it tells us that forks were familiar enough at a Venetian elite table.
To be represented among the objects worth copying.
Sugar Forks.
We have now reached a level of aristocratic dining.
Where the fork itself.
As a decorative fork.
Somewhere in Venice.
What should we make from sugar?
Fruit.
Flowers?
A fork.
Force.
Yes.
Civilization has money now.
And the renaissance table itself.
Was becoming more controlled.
Writer's increasingly disgust manners.
How to sit.
How to eat.
What not to do in company?
The Great Human Project of Eating Dinner at acquired rules.
The Dutch scholar Erasmus.
Published a famous book on manners in 1530.
Aimed at educating children in civil behaviour.
It discusses all sorts of extremely basic things.
That apparently needed saying.
Do not be disgusting.
Do not behave like an animal.
Do not put your hands everywhere.
If using a shared spoon.
Wipe it before returning it.
This last detail is particularly striking.
You taste the soup.
Wipe spoon.
Return spoon.
Next person uses it.
Suddenly the fork seems much less like unnecessary decadence.
And more alike.
Could everybody perhaps have their own things?
And Erasmus even discusses what to do if you need to pass wind at the table.
Is advice essentially.
Is that if possible you should withdraw.
If you cannot?
Disguise it with a cough.
This is genuine Renaissance etiquette.
Humanity has rediscovered Plato.
Artists are painting masterpieces.
Printers are transforming knowledge.
Michelangelo is alive.
And Europe still requires written guidance on What if I fart during dinner?
This is why history is reassuring.
No civilization has ever been entirely serious.
The fork.
Fits neatly into this wider shift.
Toward more individualized and controlled table behavior.
Separate utensils gradually become part of demonstrating.
That you understand the rules.
Food should reach the mouth neatly.
Hands should remain cleaner.
The diner should display restraint.
We are beginning to recognize the modern table.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
Because outside Italy and fashionable continental courts,
The forward.
Can still look ridiculous.
And that brings us to one of my favourite people.
In the entire history of this object.
An English traveller called me.
Thomas Corriott.
In the early 17th century.
The Couriot travelled through Europe.
He visited Italy.
He watched Italians using forks.
And he saw it.
That's actually quite sensible.
He started using one himself.
Then he went home to England.
Which is where his problems began.
Because there is no person more vulnerable to ridicule.
Than somebody who returns from travelling.
With a new habit.
And Thomas Coriat is about to become that man.
Part 4 in which an Englishman comes home with a fork.
And everyone laughs at him.
In 1608.
Thomas Couriot set off through Europe.
Courriert was an eccentric,
Energetic man.
Who travelled largely on foot.
And later wrote about his adventures.
In a wonderfully titled book called Coriath's crudities.
Published in 1611.
And while travelling through Italy.
He noticed something strange.
People were using forks.
Not occasionally.
Not ceremonially.
As ordinary meals.
Coriath saw Italians holding meat with a small fork while cutting it with a knife.
He was particularly struck by the fact that touching food in a shared dish with your fingers.
Could actually be considered bad manners.
Coriath looked at this and thought.
That makes sense.
Which was his first mistake.
Because Thomas Coriath then did what travellers have been doing ever since.
He went abroad.
Discovered a local custom.
Adopted it enthusiastically.
And came home determined to show everybody how much better things were done in Italy.
There is no more irritating person.
Thomas arrives for dinner.
Someone reaches for the meat.
Actually.
Oh no.
In Italy.
They use these.
Thomas produces a fork.
Everybody at the table immediately wishes he had stayed in Italy.
Coriath himself tells us that after returning home.
He continued using the fork.
One of his friends.
Lawrence Whittaker found this so entertaining.
That he called Koriath.
First Siffer.
This is a Latin joke.
Vrša means four.
And furcifer.
Literally has the sense of a fork-bearer.
But it could also mean something like a rogue or a scoundrel.
Thomas Couriot.
Has returned from one of the great journeys of his life.
Bringing home a dining innovation.
That will eventually become standard across Britain.
And his friend basically calls him.
Fork,
Idiot.
That is how progress often begins.
Someone has a new idea.
Everyone loves.
Two generations later.
Everybody owns one.
And pretends they never objected.
Coriat even explained why the Italians preferred forks.
He wrote that they disliked having shared dishes.
Touched by people's fingers.
Because.
.
.
As he rather reasonably observed.
Not everyone's fingers were equally clean.
This should have ended the debate immediately.
Thomas.
Perhaps we should not all put our hands in the same plate.
The English Friends.
Oh,
Look at Mr Italy over here.
Thomas.
Some of you have been outside.
To friends.
Lucifer.
And this was happening in the age of Shakespeare.
That is worth pausing over.
Shakespeare dies in 1616.
If you picture a Shakespearean dinner.
Do not automatically imagine everyone sitting there with modern knives and forks.
Neatly arranged on either side of a plate.
The table was still in transition.
Theatres are producing Hamlet.
Poets are debasing the human condition.
Explorers are crossing oceans.
And Thomas Couriot.
Is still having to defend the radical proposition.
Two metal points.
Forks did gradually catch on in England during the 17th century.
First among wealthier and more fashionable people.
The Metropolitan Museum notes that English forks were initially two-pronged.
Then three prong.
And that sets of forks only became common in the 18th century.
So this was not an over-nice revolution.
There was no morning in 1623.
When England woke up and said Finger is finished.
It happened slowly.
Household by household.
Table by table.
Someone wealthy buys forks.
Their guests see them.
One guest thinks they are ridiculous.
Another secretly thinks.
Actually,
I quite like that.
Six months later.
The second guest also owns forks.
The first guest then buys better forks.
Because now the other person has forks.
This is how civilization advances.
Mostly through social anxiety.
And France was going through much the same transition.
Forks came into increasing use there.
During the early 17th century.
By the second half of that century.
French silversmiths were producing matching fork and spoon sets known as a Cuvier Knives only joined the matching set.
Towards the end of the 1600s.
And this is important.
Because the modern idea that your cutlery should match itself is not obvious.
A knife is a knife.
A spoon is a spoon.
A fork is a fork.
They do not need to be friends.
But eventually somebody looked at three perfectly functional objects and thought to himself,
They should have the same handles.
And now we have wedding registries.
This is how it begins.
By the late 17th century.
An elegant French table.
Might have matching silver utensils made as a set.
The objects were becoming not simply practical tools,
But part of the appearance of the table.
You're a fool.
Could now coordinate with your spoon.
Your spoon.
Could coordinate with your force.
And anyone arriving with some random old knife.
Suddenly looked as though they had not been briefed.
The table had developed a dress code.
Of course,
Silver cutlery was expensive.
And in the reign of Louis XIV.
Huge quantities of French silver.
Were actually melted down after royal edicts ordered precious metal.
To be turned into coin.
To support the finances of this state and its wars.
That is one reason relatively little grand 17th century French silver survives.
There is something magnificent about this.
France.
Your Majesty.
The treasure is struggling.
Louis XIV.
Very well.
What shall we do?
Looks around Versailles.
Melt the dining room.
Imagine being a silversmith.
You have spent six months creating an exquisite matching service.
Beautiful engraving.
Perfect proportions.
Masterpiece.
Then the government says.
We need money.
History is cruel.
Meanwhile.
.
.
The fork itself was changing shape.
Two prongs had been useful for spearing food.
But adding more prongs.
Made the utensil better at gathering and holding.
Smaller pieces.
Over time.
Three and eventually four tines became common.
And once you have four,
The fork suddenly begins looking much more like the one in your kitchen drawer.
This is one of those moments in history.
When the object quietly stops being strange.
A two-pronged fork still looks slightly medieval.
Three prongs looks experimental.
Four prongs.
Well,
It's a fork.
The design meeting is over.
And yet even now.
People had not necessarily stopped carrying their own eating utensils.
In parts of early modern Europe.
Personal knives.
Burns.
And forks.
Could travel with their owner in cases.
Which is a concept I would like us to bring back.
Purely because of how impressive it sounds.
Dinner invitation.
Will you be joining us?
Wonderful.
Opens code.
Cutlery case.
There is confidence in arriving at somebody's home with your own force.
It says.
I am delighted to eat with you.
But I have seen your equipment before.
By the end of the 17th century,
However.
The direction of travel was obvious.
The fork had survived accusations of vanity.
It had survived mockery.
It had survived masculinity,
Apparently being threatened by pears.
It had survived Thomas Courriot's friends.
And increasingly.
Respectable Europeans.
Were putting forks on their tables.
Which creates a new problem.
Because once everybody agrees that a fork is necessary,
Humans immediately begin asking.
Which four?
One fork could have been enough.
It absolutely could.
But humanity has never encountered a perfectly adequate object.
Without eventually producing six specialized versions.
And in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The dining table.
Is about to become considerably more complicated.
Part five.
In which one for becomes several.
By the 18th century.
The four.
Has finally achieved something it had been working towards.
For a very long time.
It is becoming.
Normal.
Not universal.
Not everybody in Europe suddenly owns matching silverware.
Poorer households may still have very simple utensils.
And customs vary enormously from place to place.
But among the middle and upper classes.
Particularly in Western Europe.
The fork is no longer some suspicious Italian affectation.
Brought home by a man who has been abroad.
And now has opinions about olive oil.
It belongs at the table.
And once humanity accepts that a fork belongs at the table,
We immediately make the obvious mistake.
We invent more forks.
Before that happens though.
.
.
The fork itself settles into something much closer to the shape we know today.
Earlier European table forks.
It often had two long tines.
Then three became more common.
Eventually four times emerged as the practical winner.
Four turns out to be a rather good number.
Enough points to spear something.
Enough surface to gather smaller food.
Not so many that the object begins looking like a hairbrush.
The tines also become shorter.
And the whole head of the fork.
Gradually develops more of a curve.
Making it useful not simply for stubbing things.
But for actually moving food around a plate.
This is the moment.
When the fork stops behaving like a tiny weapon.
And begins behaving like cutlery.
And the interesting thing.
Is that the modern fork is so familiar now.
That its design seems inevitable.
Four prongs.
Slight curve.
Ando.
Of course.
But somebody had to arrive there.
Presumably there were generations of dining tables.
Containing forks that were almost right.
One person might pick up a two-pronged version and think it perfectly satisfactory,
Until confronted by three Ps.
Another might try the three-pronged fork and sink.
Nearly.
Then the four-pronged fork arrives.
And civilization collectively decides.
Don't touch anything else.
And essentially we haven't.
If you took a perfectly ordinary modern fork,
Back several centuries.
People would recognize what it was.
This is quite an achievement.
Phones become obsolete in five years.
Before.
From the 18th century.
Can still look at a modern fork and think.
Yes?
Same department.
But the 18th century table itself.
Was changing too.
Dining among the wealthy.
Became increasingly formalized.
Meals could involve multiple courses.
Specialised serving dishes.
Elaborate tableware.
And a growing concern with manners.
And manners.
Are where the fork really begins to flourish.
Because once an object becomes associated with being well brought up.
Its future.
Is secure.
The fork no longer merely carries food.
It begins carrying social information.
Do you know how to hold it?
Do you know which hand?
Do you know how to use the knife with it?
Are you eating neatly?
Are you touching things you should not touch?
Can you get through dinner without revealing that nobody in your childhood household ever explained what the little fork was for?
This is where dinner is.
Starts becoming a test.
You were not told you were taking.
You arrive hungry.
You sit down.
Then you notice there are several forks.
Immediately.
Hunger becomes secondary.
Why are there three?
Nobody mentioned Ciri.
One is larger.
One is smaller.
One appears to have been designed for a person with extremely narrow hands.
And the terrible thing about Four more table manners.
Is that everyone else looks completely calm.
You do what humanity has always done.
In unfamiliar social situations.
Wait for someone else.
To move first.
Soup arrives.
Ignore the forks.
Excellent.
Now the starter arrives.
Watch Caroline.
Caroline has selected the outer fork.
We trust Caroline now.
For the rest of dinner.
Caroline is essentially air traffic control.
This increasing complexity.
Really accelerates during the 19th century.
Industrialization makes metal goods easier and cheaper to manufacture in large quantities.
New techniques of silver-plating in the 19th century.
Also allow households to own tableware.
That looks impressively silver.
Without being made entirely from solid silver.
This matters.
Because suddenly the elaborate dining habits of the very rich can begin spreading downward.
Into the growing middle class.
And middle class aspiration.
Is one of history's great engines.
The aristocracy has six forks.
The middle class looks at this and does not say,
That seems unnecessary.
It says.
Where can we get six forks?
Manufacturers are delighted.
This is our civilization.
Acquires drawers.
The cutlery drawer.
Is one of the quiet monuments of industrial society.
Knives.
Spoons.
Smaller spoons.
Things at the back nobody remembers buying.
One strange utensil that might be for grapefruit.
A tiny fork that appears once every four years,
And nobody knows whether it belongs to seafood or a doll.
By the Victorian era.
Specialized cutlery begins multiplying spectacularly.
Particularly among wealthy households.
And informal dining.
There are ordinary dinner forks.
Dessert Forks Fish foot.
Oyster Forks Salad Forks.
Pastry Forks.
Serving Forks Carving Forks.
And various designs intended for specific foods.
That apparently could not be approached with ordinary equipment.
This is where the fork.
Loses all sense of proportion.
For centuries.
Humanity survived with fingers.
Then one fork appeared.
A few generations later.
This fork is for oysters only.
We escalated very quickly.
A fish fork,
For example.
Might be broader and flatter than a normal dinner for often paired with a special fish knife.
And this raises a question that has surely occurred to generations of diners.
What would actually happen?
If I ate the fish with the normal fork.
Would the fish know?
Would somebody stop the meal?
Would a small bell ring in the kitchen?
Of course not.
But the point is no longer only practical.
The point is that you know.
Formal dining has become partly a demonstration of familiarity with the code.
And once codes develop.
Etiquette books arrive to explain them.
The 19th century produces an enormous appetite for manuals.
Telling people how to behave correctly in society.
How to dress.
How to visit.
How to introduce people.
How to write invitations.
Now to sit.
And naturally.
Have to eat.
This is an extraordinary amount of guidance for an activity.
Humans had already been performing successfully.
For hundreds of thousands of years.
Apparently we had become unsure.
A Victorian diner could now consult a book.
And discover that there was a correct way to hold a fork.
A correct way to use a knife.
A correct way to behave at table.
And several incorrect ways that might reveal something terrible about your upbringing.
That is pressure.
You have spent your childhood becoming literate.
You may understand geography.
You may play piano.
You may speak French.
Then somebody watches you eat asparagus and decides No.
Or that education.
Gone.
And etiquette could vary between countries.
One particular family distinction developed between what is now often called the Continental and American styles Of handling knife and fork.
In the continental style.
The four.
Generally remains in the left hand.
Well,
The knife.
Stays in the right.
In the American star.
A diner traditionally cuts food with the fork in the left hand.
Then puts the knife down and transfers the fork to the right hand to eat.
This transfer can look quite elaborate.
If you step back and think about it.
Cut.
Put knife down.
Move fork across.
Returned for.
Pick knife up.
Someone unfamiliar with the custom.
I should reasonably ask.
Why are you conducting a relay race with your cutlery?
And the answer is.
.
.
Manners.
The American style has historical roots in European dining practice.
And became established in the United States.
Even as continental European manners evolved differently.
Which means that today.
Two perfectly polite people.
Consist opposite each other.
Use completely different systems.
And each privately notice what the other is doing.
Nobody says anything.
But they notice.
That is etiquette.
And meanwhile the fork is spreading far beyond aristocratic dining rooms.
Factories are producing cheaper metal utensils.
Restaurants are expanding.
Hotels.
Rail travel.
And public dining.
Expose more people to standardized table settings.
By the 19th century.
Carrying your own personal fork to dinner.
Becomes increasingly unnecessary in much of Europe and North America.
Because the establishment provides one.
This is another quiet revolution.
You sit down.
The Four.
Is already there.
Nobody remarks upon it.
A thousand years earlier.
A Byzantine woman uses a golden fork.
And somebody writes disapprovingly about her luxury.
Now a waiter simply puts one beside every plate.
That is how completely an object can win.
The greatest victory in the history of technology.
Is not when people admire your invention.
It is when people stop noticing it.
Nobody enters a restaurant today and says,
Would you look at that?
Individual forks.
Unless the restaurant has forgotten them.
Then suddenly we become passionate advocates of fork technology.
Uh,
Excuse me?
Could I have a fork,
Please?
And the waiter says,
Of course.
There is no philosophical debate.
No priest objects.
No one accuses you of foreign decadence.
The Fork has achieved complete social acceptance.
But the Victorian passion for specialised implements.
Creates one final absurdity.
Once you produce a fork for every category of food,
You create situations.
In which people need to know which fork comes first.
The famous modern rule.
Work from the outside inwards.
As the course has arrived.
Becomes a useful survival technique in formal dining.
And this may be the most elegant solution humanity has found to a problem.
Humanity invented itself.
First we create many forks.
Then people become confused.
Then we create a rule to manage the forks.
Then we congratulate ourselves.
On having excellent manners.
It is very similar to bureaucracy.
By the end of the 19th century.
The fork has travelled an astonishing distance.
From Rare Elite Novelty to ordinary dining utensil.
To social marker.
To industrially manufactured household items.
To an entire family of specialized metal relatives.
And if you thought that was where the story ended.
.
.
It is not.
Because it's the 20th century.
Is about to take this once expensive object.
And make it cheap enough to throw away.
Stainless steel arrives.
Mass production accelerates.
Restaurants multiply.
Air travel eventually gives us forks designed to survive exactly one meal.
Then Plastic arrives.
And after nearly a thousand years of Europeans trying to make the fork more elegant.
Someone.
Will finally make one so flimsy.
That a potato can defeat it.
Part 6 in which the fork becomes cheap enough to throw away.
By the beginning of the 20th century.
The fork has completed one of the strangest journeys an object can make.
It began as a luxury.
It became fashionable.
Then respectable.
Than necessary.
And now industry is about to make it.
That changes everything.
One of the key materials is stainless steel.
Developed in the early 20th century.
The exact history involves several metallurgists.
Working with iron-chromium alloys.
But by the 1910s,
Stainless steel was becoming commercially useful.
Because it resisted rust and staining.
Far better than ordinary steel.
For cutlery.
This was excellent news.
Silver is beautiful.
Silver is prestigious.
Silver also enjoys changing colour while sitting in a drawer.
And then requiring a person to spend part of Sunday afternoon rubbing it with a cloth.
Stainless steel arrives with a radically different proposition.
What if the fork?
Simply stayed.
Fork colored.
Luxury households had servants who could polish silver.
The 20th century household.
Increasingly had other plans.
A person comes home from work.
Opens the drawer.
And wants the fork to be ready.
Not.
Unfortunately,
The dessert forks are tarnished.
Console dinner.
Stainless steel helped make durable cutlery affordable on a vast scale.
Factories could stamp and shape forks by the thousands.
And gradually.
The fork became so ordinary.
That owning one ceased to indicate almost anything about you.
This is a major historical demotion.
Once,
A fork could say.
I am wealthy.
I am sophisticated.
I have connections to fashionable Italian dining.
By the 20th century,
It says.
I live in this drawer.
And mass production means forks begin appearing everywhere.
Ohms restaurants.
Hotels.
Railway dining cars.
Canteens.
Schools.
Hospitals.
Military missiles.
Factory cafeterias.
Eventually aeroplanes.
The fork is no longer an aristocratic accessory.
It has gone into public service.
And cafeterias are particularly important.
Because the 20th century becomes very good at feeding large numbers of people quickly.
Take tray.
Move along line.
Food.
Fork.
Sit.
Leave.
This is dining stripped down to logistics.
Nobody cares whether your fork has an ivory handle.
You have 12 minutes.
The peas are over there.
The fork becomes part of an industrial system of eating.
And then fast food arrives.
This creates an interesting problem for the fork.
Because a great deal of 20th century fast food does not actually require one.
Hamburger?
Ends.
ButtDog?
Ends.
Sandwich.
Earns.
Pizza.
An international argument.
The fork has spent centuries persuading western civilization.
That touching food is uncivilised.
And suddenly the cheeseburger appears.
And everyone says.
.
.
Actually,
Fingers are back.
The fork must have felt betrayed.
You've spent 800 years developing me.
And now.
We've wrapped the meal in paper.
Excellent.
Takeaway food also creates a new market for cutlery.
That can travel with the meal.
Which leads us eventually to one of the great indignities in the history of this once prestigious utensil.
The disposable plastic for Plastic cutlery became widespread in the post-war 20th century.
As plastics manufacturing expanded.
And disposable consumer culture grew.
And the philosophical transformation is extraordinary.
An eleventh century princess owns a golden fork.
A Victorian family.
May treasure a silver service for generations.
A few centuries later.
Somebody hands you a white plastic fork in a packet with a napkin and two grains of salt.
Use once.
Then put it in the bin.
The fork has gone from heirloom.
To litter.
And some disposable forks are wonderful examples of the phrase.
Technically a fork.
Four tines are present.
There is a handle.
The legal requirements appear to have been satisfied.
Then you attempt to eat anything firmer than yogurt.
The fork bends gently backward.
This is particularly common in takeaway meals,
Where the food has somehow been designed to be structurally stronger than the utensil supplied to defeat it.
You press into a roast potato.
The potato remains unchanged.
The fork now has three tines.
And a personal history.
Airline meals push this to another level.
Commercial aviation develops rapidly after the Second World War.
And as flying becomes more accessible.
Eating dinner several kilometers above the earth.
Becomes increasingly normal.
Think about how absurd this is.
For almost all of human existence.
Eating required finding food.
And somewhere reasonably safe to sit.
Now,
A person is moving at hundreds of miles an hour through the sky.
And becomes annoyed because The fork is a bit flimsy.
This is an astonishingly high standard for civilization.
And airline cutlery changes according to security concerns.
Airline class and period.
Metal cutlery has certainly been used on flight.
And still is in many contexts.
While disposable plastic or other materials have also become common.
But the basic airline fork.
Has one important characteristic.
It must fit inside an extremely small tray.
Everything on an airline meal.
Appears to have been designed by someone working with a scale of approximately 70%.
Smoker.
Small bread roll.
Small Butcher.
Small four.
Tiny soul.
Even the napkin seems to have been cut down from a larger napkin.
Because aviation cannot afford unnecessary fabric.
And then you drop the fork.
This creates a crisis.
At home.
You bend down.
On a plane.
The fork has fallen into a narrow geological formation between your seat and the person beside you.
You know where it is.
You can see part of it.
But retrieving it would require a manoeuvre too intimate to perform beside a stranger.
The fork is gone.
You finish with the spoon.
History moves on.
Meanwhile.
.
.
Another utensil has been quietly waiting for its moment.
The spore.
A combined spoon and fork.
We have already seen that ancient Romans produced utensils combining spoon-like and fork-like ends.
So the fundamental idea is ancient.
But the modern word spork.
Appears in the 20th century.
And the utensil becomes especially associated with cafeterias.
Fast food.
Camping.
And institutional meals.
The Spork is perhaps the most honest utensil ever created.
It does not claim elegance.
It does not claim refinement.
It says.
.
.
There will be food.
This will probably manage it.
It is a spoon with little teeth.
Or four.
That has accepted it may occasionally encounter soup.
The spork solves two problems badly enough.
That everyone agrees it has solved both.
And yet it is perfect for situations where carrying two utensils feels extravagant.
School lunch.
Camping.
Take away.
Prison.
Anywhere the sentence.
Do we really need both?
Has been asked by somebody responsible for a budget.
Children encounter the spork and immediately test whether it can be used for anything other than eating.
Cut the book.
Drumstick.
Small shovel.
Weapon against mashed potato.
The inventor may have had one intention.
The school cafeteria as others.
And so.
.
.
After a thousand years of cultural negotiation.
Humanity has reached complete fork saturation.
Which means our final part can deal with the fork as it exists now.
The plastic fork people increasingly want to get rid of.
The reusable fork people carry around.
The etiquette fork that somehow survives.
The fork in art,
Design and advertising.
And the strange fact that after centuries of refinement one of the most common modern uses for a fork.
Is still exactly what an impatient child is.
Discoverers instinctively.
Poke the food.
And see what happens.
Part 7.
In which the fork becomes so ordinary that nobody notices it.
By the 21st century.
The fork has reached perhaps the highest status Any invention can achieve.
We have stopped thinking about it.
Nobody wakes up excited because there are forks in the kitchen.
Nobody invites friends over and says.
.
.
Come quickly.
I have acquired four excellent forks.
You open the drawer.
Take one.
Use it.
Wash it.
Put it back.
And devote almost no conscious thought to the fact that generations of people once considered this tiny object.
Strange.
Foreign.
Decadent.
Unmanly.
Elegant.
Expensive.
And socially important.
The fork has become invisible.
Until,
Of course.
.
.
There isn't one.
You buy something for lunch.
You sit down.
You open a container.
There's no fork.
Suddenly you are no longer a sophisticated modern adult.
You were standing in an office kitchen.
Looking through drawers with increasing urgency.
Surely there is a fork.
There are 17 teaspoons.
There is a corkscrew.
There is something made of silicon whose purpose nobody understands.
But no fork.
And within 30 seconds you are considering whether pasta can reasonably be eaten.
With two coffee stirrers.
This is when we remember what the fork has done for us.
Modern cutlery itself has become much simpler than the great Victorian forest of specialist utensils.
Four more restaurants may still provide different forks.
For different courses.
And silverware manufacturers.
Still make specialised designs.
But most households manage perfectly well.
With something like Bigfoot.
Small Fort.
Perhaps one strange fork nobody remembers acquiring.
The Oyster Fork has not vanished from civilization.
But it is no longer central to most people's emotional life.
And even formal etiquette has relaxed.
The old rule of working from the outside inward.
Remains useful if you encounter a complicated place setting.
But for most meals.
Nobody is secretly counting your tines.
Probably.
And the fork continues evolving at the edges.
There are adaptive forks designed for people with limited grip or movement.
With thicker handles.
Angled heads or weighted designs.
There are travel forks that fold.
Camping utensils,
Combining fork,
Spoon and knife.
Reusable cutlery sets.
Designed to replace disposables.
Children's forks with rounded tines specialist culinary forks.
Still used in kitchens and carving.
The basic idea remains unchanged.
Handle points food We have had artificial intelligence.
Reusable rockets.
Quantum computing.
Yet the fork looks at all this and says,
Four prongs and I'm still working.
That is confidence.
One major modern change has involved the material.
Rather than the design.
The disposable plastic for.
Once a symbol of convenience.
Has increasingly become something governments,
Businesses and consumers are trying to reduce.
Because single-use plastics create enormous quantities of waste.
Many places have introduced restrictions on disposable plastic cutlery.
And restaurants have experimented with wood.
Bandhu.
And other alternatives.
Which has created another fascinating stage in the history of the fork.
After centuries spent making the fork stronger.
We have begun deliberately making some of them out of wood again.
History has a sense of humour.
You receive a wooden takeaway for environmentally preferable.
Then you put it in your mouth.
And become intensely aware that you are eating with a small piece of timber.
There is a very particular sensation when your teeth touch it.
Your entire nervous system says.
Tree.
Still.
The technology is improving.
And reusable metal cutlery is obviously even simpler when practical.
The fork has therefore somehow become involved in environmental policy.
Peter Damien would be amazed.
A thousand years ago.
The concern was that the fork represented excessive luxury.
Now the concern may be that we have made too many extremely cheap ones.
Same object.
Opposite problem.
And then there are the places where forks never became dominant in the first place.
Modern Global Dining.
Makes this wonderfully obvious.
You might eat breakfast with a fork.
Lunch with chopsticks and dinner using bread or your fingers.
Nobody needs to declare a winner.
A fork is not the final evolutionary form of eating.
It is simply good at particular jobs.
Chopsticks can handle foods that become awkward under a fork.
Hands are still the best tools for countless dishes.
A spoon remains undefeated whenever liquid appears.
Try eating broth with a fork.
And you rapidly discover that technological progress has boundaries.
The fork lifts out.
The soup remains.
This is not the soup being difficult.
You have selected the wrong department.
And some foods actively resist or civilisation.
A large burger containing six layers.
You begin confidently with your hands.
Three minutes later,
The bottom bun has ceased to exist.
And there is sauce on your wrist.
Someone offers you a four.
You accept.
The fork has returned as emergency services.
The same can happen with cake.
Fries.
Leftovers.
Take out noodles.
And something you were absolutely going to transfer onto a proper plate.
But have instead begun eating directly from the container.
While standing in front of the refrigerator.
This may be the fork's true modern habitat.
Now's this day's banquet.
Not the formal dining room.
A person at 11.
20pm.
Opening the fridge and sinking.
I'll just have one bite.
The fork enters.
Ten minutes later,
The container is mysteriously empty.
No plate was involved.
So.
.
.
After roughly a thousand years of Europeans arguing about whether this tiny object was necessary.
Sophisticated.
Or ridiculous.
This may be the fork's final victory.
Nobody cares anymore.
You pick it up.
You eat dinner.
You put it down.
And unless somebody has served soup.
It does the job.
Perfectly.
