The easiest way, however, that also avoids unnecessary embarrassment when you are in a restaurant or at an important dinner, is definitely to start using the cutlery from the outside to continue to the inner side closest to the plate. The perplexity, sans rien dire, arises only for tables of formal lunches and dinners, because normally we only use one or at most two forks for the different main dishes (main course and side dish).
#Fork tines how to#
The fish fork can also be distinguished by some small optional notches on the sides or by a larger left gripper which serves to better adapt itself to the fishbone.Īlso to Julia Roberts in the “Pretty Woman” movie is taught to look at the position of the cutlery and the different number of tines of the forks to understand how to use them at the table.
#Fork tines skin#
The different number of tines or the anomalous shape was created to make a greater lever on the fish while separating the skin from the body. Its different design is to be attributed to the function it must perform: along with the fish knife, the fish fork must simplify the cleaning of the fish and its consumption. Sometime the fish fork can also have the same size as the normal forks, but it is always slightly flattened and has four tines that do not start on the same line and it has also an emptier central space, or they have three tines where the central one is shorter. Probably many will have noticed that the fork of the fish, albeit with four tines, has a design and a shape of the tines completely different from the traditional table fork. The only fork that preserves just two tines is the one used for escargot or ham, just because these foods must be stuck before being eaten. Also the fish fork can have only three tines, of which the central one is shorter because it serves to facilitate the cleaning of the fish. The presence at the table, even today, of the forks with three tines, for the dessert and sometimes also for the side dish salad, is explained precisely with the different types of food served at the table: both the desserts and the salad (and sometimes even fruit), do not need to be collected or cut, but they can also be just pierced to be brought to the mouth. The introduction of more tines is explained by the use of different dishes at the table, which did not necessarily have to be pierced or blocked, but just collected and accompanied to the mouth. The first forks introduced in the Eastern Roman Empire had two tines, they were a miniature derivation of agricultural tools and they were used only to pierce food and in case to cut them firmly. The different number of tines in the forks can be attributed to a change in habits and customs at the table.
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The fork with four tines is instead ideal both for collecting food, which does not need to be pierced, and to accompany the food to the mouth. Over time, there were also produced forks with five or six tines but they were too big to introduce food into the mouth. The four tines design is to be attributed to a study on the greater ease of taking food and accompanying it to the mouth: the forks with two or three tines were perfect for piercing food but not for collecting it, and they were also often uncomfortable to bring food to the mouth.
In the reign of Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, the court chamberlain Gennaro Spadaccini conceived the fork with four tines as we know it today. Only in 1700, using a fork at the table began to be considered normal. The spread in Italy of the fork occurred in the fourteenth century under the Kingdom of Naples, although its use was still badly seen both by the Church and by countries such as France. It is from the Byzantine Empire that the fork was introduced in the West, around 1000 AD. The forks that were known and used in the Eastern Roman Empire had mainly two or three tines and they were used to pierce the food. The ancient Greeks and Romans used mainly their hands to eat, in the richest families at most there was the habit of wearing silver thimbles to avoid getting fingers dirty. The existence of the fork has been witnessed since ancient times there are no certain documents but it seems that his invention dates back to the IV century AD in the Eastern Roman Empire, even if it was not the fork as we know it today.
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