In the West, it's common to get a chunk of meat like a chicken breast or a steak to cut with your knife and fork.

In Asia, meat and veggies are often served in small chunks, easy to be picked up by chopsticks.

In India and some Arab and African cuisines, mushed and stewed food is served in shallow bowls to be picked up with a piece of flatbread held between the fingers.

But what came first, the food or the utensils?

Maybe one would think the food, because the utensils provide solutions to problems. But considered this:

Pasta became popular in Italy shortly after the fork was introduced. Coincedence? Probably. Maybe...

Also, in the rest of Europe, where the fork became popular much later, pasta lagged behind, too. I can imagine the introduction of the fork opened a host of possibilities that seemed beyond the realm of even the most fervent culinary dreamer who's perverse ambitions were limited by the sober reality of the spoon and the knife.

On the one hand, culinary inventions come about more frequently than cutlery innovations. So one would think it's the food that adapts. On the other, cutlery would intuitively seem secondary to the food, like the remote is to the television, and therefore not relevant to the course of cuisine.

What do y'all think?