Why Europeans Refused To Use Forks For Hundreds Of Years

The year was 1004. The place, Venice, Italy, in the palace of the Doge. Maria Argyropoulina, who had travelled from the Byzantine Empire to marry the son of the ruler of Venice, began to eat, and in so doing, shocked the entire court of her new home. You see, unlike the hand-to-mouth eating method that the Venetians used, she skewered her food. This princess in a new land ate using a two-pronged golden utensil which we modern-day eaters would call a fork. And she was lambasted for it (much like how we now look at people who eat handheld foods with a fork and knife).

This early mention entered into the historical record by Saint Peter Damian seemed to set the stage for four centuries of mostly forkless eating in Europe (he addended his account of Maria's horrifying table display by saying she was rightfully struck down by plague). The pronged utensil too closely resembled Satan's pitchfork, argued holy men who were frankly hostile toward Eastern customs and religion.

After 400-some forkless years of eating in the West, with the exception of the Italian peninsula (where the rise of spaghetti noodle consumption necessitated something other hands, knives, and spoons), the Portuguese showed signs of budging by the mid-15th century. They were followed by the French nearly a century later when Catherine de Medici brought her whole collection of the utensils to the court of her new husband, Henry II.

The U.K. took a bit longer to catch on with the fork trend, since the men of this island nation viewed the use of this dainty utensil to be too feminine for their likes (though these days eating fish and chips with your hands is a British faux pas). But by the 1700s they, too, were spearing their food with the multi-pronged tools. Naturally, the British brought their cutlery over to the American colonies, though its use wasn't popularized among the burgeoning members of what would become a new nation until around the time they started fighting with King George III.

In the next century, Americans would introduce the four-pronged model (allowing them to use their forks to perfectly slice cheese), along with a variety of other types for specific foods, thus ingraining the utensil into Western culture. Now, if you'll excuse us, we need to reorganize our flatware drawer to more prominently display these symbols of refinement.