19th C. Changes to Dining Forks

The spoon is now pretty well subdued also, and the fork, insolent and triumphant, has become a sumptuary tyrant. The true devotee of fashion does not dare to use a spoon except to stir his tea or to eat his soup with, and meekly eats his ice cream with a fork and pretends to like it.

Until 1922, proper etiquette demanded that specialized forks be used for eating ice cream. Not everyone was happy with this fad. As Florence Howe Hall, the the granddaughter of Julia Ward Howe, complained in 1887:

The fork has now become the favorite and fashionable utensil for conveying food to the mouth. First it crowded out the knife, and now in its pride it has invaded the domain of the once powerful spoon. The spoon is now pretty well subdued also, and the fork, insolent and triumphant, has become a sumptuary tyrant. The true devotee of fashion does not dare to use a spoon except to stir his tea or to eat his soup with, and meekly eats his ice cream with a fork and pretends to like it.

The more diners resorted to the fork, the more they noticed its limitations. A two-tined fork may be useful for spearing, but it is not a good tool for eating delicate foods like flaky fish or pastry. To meet this need and other presumed ones, flatware manufacturers stepped into the breach, paying greater attention to the shape of the utensils as they related to food. Although multi-tined forks had periodically been manufactured for centuries, dinner forks were now regularly made with several tines (usually three or four, but on occasion up to five or six) rather than with two long, widely spaced straight ones. 

In this way, the diner could spear food without having to twist the fork and risk damaging a delicate morsel or, worse yet, having the food fall off the tines or slip through the space between them. The additional tines, now molded in a slightly curved fashion, helped to scoop up food like a spoon, and the curve allowed for a clearer view of the food being cut. Fish forks were designed with four tines, of which the outer two curved slightly for ease in picking up flaked pieces of fish. A special pastry fork, or “cutting fork,” was patented in 1869 by Reed & Barton, with one thick outer tine sharp enough to cut the pastry. Its remaining tines functioned like those on a regular fork to bring the food to the mouth. — From “Feeding Desire,” 2006

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia