Fork luncheons, at which all the dishes served are manipulated by fork alone, are now the vogue, and mark the dominance of an implement which is claimed to have been invented by a Venetian lady, Princess Teodora, in the eleventh century.
Forks, however, seem to have taken a long time to displace their proverbial forerunners, fingers, in Northern Europe; for Tom Coryat, when passing through Italy in the early days of the seventeenth century "observed a custom what is not used in any other country that I saw in my travels, neither do I think that any other nation in Christendom does use it, but only Italians, who do always at their meals use a little fork when they cut their meat."
After describing these strange implements and their use, he added, with manifest astonishment, that anyone who touched the meat with his fingers, according to the good old custom elsewhere, was held to have "transgressed the laws of good manners, in so much that for his error he shall at least be browbeaten if not reprehended in words." All of which, he plainly feared, would be taken as traveller's tales by his readers.
The Irish Times, February 18th, 1930.