Etiquette for Serving of Chinese Meals

In high-caste or Mandarin families, a servant has his place at the foot of the table, but he stands throughout the meal. -Image source, Pinterest

Considerable etiquette governs the manner of picking desired morsels from the main bowls, out of which all eat, using chopsticks. In high-caste or Mandarin families, a servant has his place at the foot of the table, but he stands throughout the meal.

It is his duty to serve at the table the portions from the main dishes to each individual, and to do what the host generally does for the other servants waiting on table take their orders from him, and he is really there as a sort of proxy for the host.– By Florence Austen Chase, 1929

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette for Bidding “Bon Voyage”

Should the gift be given on the boat, or would it be better to give it prior to their leaving?

Q. We are to bid “bon voyage” to friends who are leaving soon for Europe and I wish to know if a fancy box of chocolates, with a “bon voyage” card attached would be a suitable gift, as it is for ladies. Should the gift be given on the boat, or would it be better to give it prior to their leaving?

A. The box of chocolates would be quite all right for the parting gift. It may be given to the steward on the boat, with instructions to place it in their state room, or it may be given to them prior to their leaving, either of which would be correct. The former, perhaps, would afford the greater pleasure, since it would then be received after the excitement of saying “goodbyes” and leaving friends behind- and the surprise “done up in packages” in the state room would be more enjoy able.– By Florence Austin Chase, 1929

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Wedding Fashion Etiquette of 1929

Usually children should wear simple clothes, but weddings are one time when they are dressed picturesquely so that they belong in the pageant of the wedding procession.

MEDIEVAL WEDDING DRESSES ARE ALWAYS EFFECTIVE

When Lucille Rogers was married she chose to dress her attendants in medieval costumes. For herself she chose a heavy satin in deep, deep ivory. The tulle veile matched it in shade. The dress was made with long bodice plain and tight-fitting. The skirt had a long train which hung in two panels. Her attendants wore dresses with ivory transparent velvet bodices and skirts of georgette. The georgette was in three flat tiers, the first being a light shade, the second darker and the third deepest of all, One maid had three shades of rose, another of yellow, another of green and the last of lavender. The bodice was cut low in the back and depending from the bodice was a large soft, two-looped bow, with ends which formed short trains.

The flower girls wore quaint dresses of washable fine voile. The dresses were short waisted and puff sleeved. The three tiered skirts were of pale pink, a deeper shade and then a soft rose.

At another wedding the ring bearer was in white satin with white satin pillow. His little blouse had a frill of soft satin at the neck. The little girl had a dress with a deep Bertha collar which was caught up on one shoulder with grosgrain ribbon. Both of these children were pictures. Their mothers had had sense enough not to curl the hair. It fell loosely and naturally, and did not have the frizzy look that hair so often has. Usually children should wear simple clothes, but weddings are one time when they are dressed picturesquely so that they belong in the pageant of the wedding procession. - Nancy Page By Florence La Ganke, San Pedro News Pilot, 1929

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Ordering Etiquette in Restaurants

“It is necessary to know what the main course is going to be before fixing upon the wine. Therefore, do not order wine until the main dish has been chosen by those at the table.”- Amy Vanderbilt 

Q. Dear Miss Vanderbilt: I would like to know if there are any specific rules on the order in which you order various dinner courses in a restaurant. That is, do you order appetizer, salad, main course, vegetable and potato way you would be served or is there a rule of etiquette to govern just how you state your order to the waiter? 

I have been told that the correct way is to order your main (meat) course first, then salad, appetizer and vegetable, but I have been unable to substantiate this is any books of etiquette. I would appreciate your help. -Mrs. E. S., Bridgeville, Pa.

A. You order the appetizer first, then the fish course if any, then the meat course. If separate vegetables are listed on the menu, you indicate which ones you would like. Otherwise, they are served automatically with the meat course. Although you don't order the meat first, you have decided on it before ordering the preliminary course or courses.

Recently there was a symposium for New York prep school boys at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. They were instructed on how to order. It is important, they were told, that the choice of courses balance with another. You can see what would be wrong with herring with sour cream, followed by cream of asparagus soup, chicken fricassee, salad with Russian dressing and Washington cream pie. 

Also, it is necessary to know what the main course is going to be before fixing upon the wine. Therefore, do not order wine until the main dish has been chosen by those at the table. If you don't know too much about wines, never hesitate to ask the advice of the sommelier, or wine steward. He can't make, intelligent suggestions until he knows what your main course is.– 1965, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Gilded Age Office Gift Etiquette

It is not customary, but sometimes employers are moved to make a present to employees in appreciation of services in addition to the salary paid.

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS   

The matter of giving Christmas presents is one of individual taste. A stenographer is at liberty to give presents to her employer and those who are her companions in the office if she feels so inclined, but if she does not it would not be considered “a breach of etiquette.” It is not customary, but sometimes employers are moved to make a present to employees in appreciation of services in addition to the salary paid. If the firm or others in the office should offer the stenographer one or more gifts at the glad Christmastide she would be very rude if she did not accept such. – San Francisco Call, 1898

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette and Appreciation of Soup

What Have We Here? — A Gilded Age place setting with a French écuelle. An écuelle is a 2 handled bowl, generally with a cover to keep soup hot. The écuelle is perfect for a broth or light soup. A small round (bouillon) soup spoon sits to the right. – From the book, “Yesteryear… More of What Have We Here?: The Etiquette and Essentials of Past Times to the Mid-20th Century”

NEW YORK Every eater has a special set of gastronomic obsessions. One of my most persistent has to do with hot soup, by which I really mean hot ' soup. Anything less than a curtain of steam that obscures an eating partner across the table is to me soup that borders on the tepid, a soup that must be hurried through before it is actually cold and therefore inedible. 

Today one is generally served soup that ranges from barely tepid to very warm. Or which, at best, is Just a few degrees above body temperature, so that it feels hot to the lips but dies a chilly death by the time it reaches the back of the tongue. Nor do a few wan wisps of rising steam prove that soup is really hot. but merely that the liquid is somewhat warmer than the room in which it is being served. 

A combination of reasons Is behind this creeping tepidism that is understandable, if not excusable. For one thing, hardly anyone under 45 really knows what hot means when related to soup. At least two generations separate today's eaters from forbears who emigrated from Russia, Germany, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and China, where even today Microwave, like it not, hot soup is taken seriously. 

Ever frugal, wise old housewives served soup so hot that the preheated tureens added to the warmth of the room and one could thaw winter chilled hands by sliding them over the outside of the bowl. Finally, when eaten, these soups served as personalized central heating systems. Hot soup has also met Its demise partly at the hands of etiquette snobs who decry blowing on broth or slurping It from a spoon. Many restaurants deliberately serve tepid soup for economic reasons. If they are relatively inexpensive eating places that rely on turnover, they cannot afford to have chairs occupied an extra 10 minutes per seating by customers waiting for soup (or coffee, tea or cocoa) to cool. 

To work one's way through a bowlful of incendiary soup is to pass through several stages of enjoyment, almost Oriental In their subtle refinements. Start with a bowl of soup that is topped by a mushroom cloud of steam, a soup that is still atremble with its own inner heat, and you begin by inhaling a heady essence, as the scent pervades your nostrils long before its substance can touch your tongue. Soon you pick up a small amount on the tip of the spoon and between whispering sips and lightly exhaled, cooling puffs, you begin carefully to get a sense of what the liquid portion of the soup holds in store. 

These early sips must exclude solids, still too hot to handle in the throat. In a few minutes the soup is merely hot and larger mouthfuls can be handled, revealing liquid and solids in full-bodied splendor. After that, and eating ever more quickly, the warm soup is a luxurious comfort, full of taste but allowing freedom from caution. Now you can really consider the tastes behind tastes, the textures of solids, the herbs and pot vegetables that perfume the brew. As always when eating soup, intermittent bites of bread renew the palate to the subtleties of the liquid. – By Mimi Sheraton, New York Times News Service, 1979

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette for Feeding Romance

Comes now the silly season, or the romantic season, or the wonderful season, or the lyrical season, depending on where you stand in these matters. And it might be well, at this point, to look at some groceries with an eye to their R.Q., or Romantic Quotient.

... And Another Thing

Now springtime is approaching like a runaway choo-choo, and we'd all better get ready. Comes now the silly season, or the romantic season, or the wonderful season, or the lyrical season, depending on where you stand in these matters. And it might be well, at this point, to look at some groceries with an eye to their R.Q., or Romantic Quotient.

This is no new endeavor. Since people and food were invented, which was at about the same time, people have been interested in the romantic or - hopefully – aphrodisiac properties of what they eat.

But I bring sad tidings. If you have been depending heavily on Arabian skunk or Roman goose tongue or the brains of love- making sparrows - as did the ancients - you might as well forget it. They do no good. Nor, apparently, do the more personal parts of the poisonous puffer fish, no matter what the modern Japanese think. Nor does anything else.

And, to quote Mimi Sheraton. who has made quite a study of these things, and I wish all research projects were as interesting, “I have yet to find the food one bite of which will cause me to drop my fork and make straight for the bedroom.”

Still, it might not be without value (this is a phrase we scholarly writers like to use be cause it sounds more scholarly than “it might be valuable”) to consider what foods or dishes are definitely UN-aphrodisiac in their effect. On whoever is watching you eat, that is. And while I am no expert in matters of the heart, I once wrote an Etiquette Book in which I touched briefly on the less attractive aspects of ingesting food.

So let's plunge in.

Anything you must spit out some of, such as grapes or olives with pits in them, isn't particularly romantic fodder. You can, however, swallow the grape seeds, and I don't think they’ll hurt you any, even if your mother did tell you they'd give you appendicitis. At least, when you attack a piece of grappa cheese, the rind of which is solid grape seeds, you're supposed to eat them, else you display a certain lack of savoir faire. Next time, don't order it. 

Corn, of course, presents a nearly insoluble problem. When a girl eats it on the cob, her lipstick tends to meld with the butter, on the cob and around her mouth. (On the other hand, if one slices the corn off, one may arouse the suspicion that one’s choppers are not one’s own.)

A lady I know insists on drinking all her drinks except hot coffee through a straw, because she can shape her mouth so prettily around it.

Then there is the sound of spaghetti. This is a welcome sound to the chef who prepared it, for it is the sound of appreciation. But it is not a romantic sound.

Consider, too, the too-fat hamburger, dribbling bits of letutce and mayonnaise down the chin, to leave it smelling like a blue plate salad.

Consider, too, the potency of peanut butter, the scent of which carries three times farther and lasts six times longer than any- thing by Lanvin or Chanel. These are all gustatory truths which must be faced and grappled with.

And yet, to be honest, we must admit that whether or not spaghetti or corn on the cob or even peanut butter is romantic depends to a huge extent on who is eating them. Which is only one of the many lyrical facts about Springtime. – By Peg Bracken, 1965

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

How Fried Chicken Etiquette Changed

Etiquette for eating fried chicken has changed since the advent of the first “fast food” chicken offerings. Founded in Illinois in 1952, Chicken Delight came on the scene first. It grew rapidly with home delivery service and a memorable jingle, “Don’t cook tonight, Call Chicken Delight.” Due to Kentucky Fried Chicken also entering the take-out fried chicken market that same year, but with far fewer stores, and its subsequent widespread franchising of fast food restaurants across the nation, KFC overtook Chicken Delight in popularity by the 1970’s. KFC has since become a global phenomenon.

Hands off pieces of chicken! Unless of course, they are “nuggets.”

From the 1930’s: 

DEAR Mrs. Post: Is it incorrect, according to etiquette, to eat even the slightest bit of chicken in the fingers? I don't mean whether it is correct to take up what can be cut off the bone easily enough, but I am referring to the very small bones from which it is impossible to cut meat loose with knife and fork. Aren't good table manners to-day more lenient about these foods, especially if finger bowls are provided?

Answer: No, people are less lenient than they used to be. That is, if we go back to the descriptions given us by the writers of long ago, and as copied for instance in the moving picture of Henry the Eighth, who picked up a whole chicken in his hands and tore it apart, our table manners have become positively finicking. The only thing that could soil the fingers and is not tabooed by the meticulous are lobster claws. And when such lobster is served, finger bowls of hot soapy water should be provided at once. Perhaps, if this practice were followed when serving chicken, there would be no objection to taking the wings in the fingers. – by Emily Post, in Good Taste Today, 1937

 

From the 1970’s: 

According to Amy Vanderbilt, “Chicken must be eaten with fork and knife except at picnics. Bones are not put into the mouth but are stripped with the knife while being held firmly by the fork. Joints are cut if one's knife is sharp enough and it can be done without lifting the elbows from the normal eating position. Chicken croquettes should be cut with the fork only, as are all croquettes and fish cakes, then conveyed to the mouth in manageable pieces.”

From Today: 

According to Maura J. Graber, Etiquipedia© Site Editor and Director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, chicken in the form of chicken “nuggets,” “tenders,”“Dino bites,” and the like, are all finger foods. Fried chicken which is designed for enjoying as a finger food looks positively silly when eaten with a knife and fork. That being said, one still has to follow basic table manners, however. There is no finger licking, lip smacking or stuffing one’s mouth to the limit allowed.

 

 🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia