Forks merged in the European eating settings only in the 15th and 16th centuries. One can trace the history of the fork back to the dagger - sharpened metal stick that can be used to transport pieces of objects of solid consistency. It didn’t take on a food sense until the mid –fifteenth century.
The person credited with introducing the eating fork to England was Thomas Coryate, an author and traveler from the time of Shakespeare who was famous for walking huge distances – to India and back in one occasion.
In his writing, Coryate’s Crudities, in 1611 he gave much praise to the dinner fork, which he had first encountered in Italy. In 1616, Ben Jonson, English poet and dramatist, took up Coryate’s campaign for amore salutary table in The Devil Is an Ass, which he surmised that the Italians used forks to keep their hands clean and spare the host soiled napkins.
Until the late nineteenth century the fork became part of the basic equipment of a lower–middle class kitchen, while working-class families largely continued to eat with knives and spoons.
History of fork
