Post WWI Manners for Immigrants

In 1919, shortly after WWI women’s magazines were promoting fashionable shoes of the day, while women themselves were teaching homemaking and table manners to new immigrants to the United States. 

Women Help Food Campaign and Offer Table Etiquette Lessons for Patriots

Public domain image of an Opticon circa 1895

The county home-demonstration agent of Monroe County, New York, has converted her small car into a “Victory Special.” Demonstrations are given from the car, and equipment is carried for exhibits of labor-saving devices. In July the “Victory Special” made 34 visits to community meetings, and the agent's message reached 3,646 persons. In one city in Iowa the women connected with home-demonstration work have issued a statement of war-time etiquette called “Table Manners for Patriots.”

In Bristol County, Massachusetts, which contains many manufacturing towns, a food-demonstration truck has been very successful. Demonstrations out of doors in various villages have been well attended, the truck being used in the afternoon and early evening. A special effort was made to reach the Portuguese, French and Italian people. These people would not come to an indoor meeting, but eagerly collected on the sidewalk to watch the demonstration. They were glad to receive literature written in their own language.

In various towns of Windham County, Connecticut, the canning campaign carried on by home-demonstration agents was furthered by the use of an outdoor stereopticon which threw views on a screen over a store window. This attracted good audiences, and nine demonstrations were given, two of these being to foreigners with the aid of an interpreter. – The Inyo Independent, 1919

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

Etiquette for Mumbai’s Mobile Phones

There’s almost never a moment when someone isn’t talking, texting, scrolling, or watching something on YouTube, Facebook, or WhatsApp. Mobile or cell phone manners in India are a complete reverse of what is acceptable in Western countries, and even most other Asian nations.

How India has cranked cell phone calls up to 11 and, very often, into a group activity

Etiquette Lessons with Mac and Cheese

A childhood favorite of Etiquipedia, homemade macaroni and cheese is one of the ultimate comfort foods requested by everyone from toddlers to baby boomers when in need of something hot and healthy. - Above, two large and stunning macaroni servers in sterling with gilded bowls and tines. On the left is a Wm B Durgin Co. rare piece, in the multi motif Scroll 1886 Aesthetic floral pattern, & is engraved Elsie Lincoln and marked with the 1878. It has a Durgin D hallmark Sterling & the silversmith retailer Bailey Banks & Biddle. On the right is a Hamilton & Diesinger macaroni server in an unknown pattern, with a large and deep bowl. This is the largest I have seen of this type of utensil.

Children May Be Served with Hot Midday Meal…

This Is Latest Proposal of the Mothers' and Second Ward Improvement Clubs

Hot lunches for the school-children is the latest proposal of the Second Ward Improvement Club and the Parents and Teachers’ Club of the Grant Grammar School, the food to be furnished to the tots at a nominal figure and served to them in one of the schoolrooms, which is to be fitted up for the purpose,

The subject was brought to the attention of the Improvement Club by Mrs. F. Karo, President of the Parents and Teachers’ Club, who asserted that the idea is a good one from an economic viewpoint as the cost of the box lunch would be no greater than that of the “cold bite” carried by the child. One of the advantages from the hot lunch, she pointed out, is that the child will not be forced out into the rain and there required to sit for half a day with wet garments, as many are compelled to do during the rainy season. No small proportion of the children are ill-fed, she asserted. and to assist such as these, as well, it is proposed to give them something warm for the mid-day meal.

A light lunch, consisting of bread and butter, soup or beans, or macaroni and cheese and other dishes of this kind, Mrs. F. B. Brown said, could be served for the sum of 5 cents and should the child wish something more a dessert of some kind could be furnished for sum not exceeding 2 cents more. The subject has already been taken up by Joseph E. Hancock, Principal of the school, who will arrange to have one of his teachers in charge of the tables so that instruction in table etiquette may be given to those who need it.

The two clubs, working with the cooperation of the School Board and the Principal, expect to have the proper equipment installed in the near future. All present at the meeting felt certain that but little trouble would be encountered in getting the necessary money with which to start such a plant.

The Second Ward Club warmly commended the action of the City Council in rushing the work on the curbs and gutters in that portion of the city, as well as the city's activity in the direction of clearing the streets and vacant lots of weeds. — San Jose Mercury News, 1911

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

Spanish Premier Talks King’s Etiquette

King Alfonso’s recent visit to King Manuel of Portugal was of a private character and that it had no bearing on the matrimonial projects of the Portuguese Monarch – Public domain photo of King Manuel of Portugal, circa 1909

Says Two Kings Never Discussed Matrimony

Spanish Premier Denies Alfonso Visited…

Manuel to Plan for Nuptials

MADRID, Feb. 16. The premier, Señor Maura, declared today that King Alfonso’s recent visit to King Manuel of Portugal was of a private character and that it had no bearing on the matrimonial projects of the Portuguese Monarch.

A member of King Alfonso’s immediate entourage says that the King has expressed himself several times recently as being determined to make an aeroplane fight with Wilbur Wright, the American aeroplanist, who is conducting a series of flights at Pau, France.

The whole Court is opposed to the idea on the ground that it would be a breach of etiquette, but the informant added that when his Majesty makes up his mind to do a thing nothing can stop him. – Los Angeles Herald, 1909

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

Etiquette for New Salad Forks in 1930

Salad forks, since their first arrival on the table in 1885, came in a variety of types and shapes, just as salads themselves do. 

AN EDITORIAL writer in the Los Angeles Times sees a brighter future for Imperial Valley lettuce growers as a result of the recent invention of a new table tool designated to simplify the problem of eating lettuce salad.

The Western Growers Protective association is given credit for introducing the new lettuce fork to a public that has been trying for several years to devise a graceful method of devouring lettuce leaves.

Probably our former fellow-townsman, C.B. Moore, had something to do with this. If he did, we ought to erect a monument to C.B.

FOLLOWING is the Times editorial:

“Not content with starting new religions and ‘new architecture’ and new styles for the flappers, California has invented a new lettuce fork with a blade attachment to cut succulent salads. We are inventing a new etiquette to go with it.

“This naturally cuts the old-timers to the quick. We grow more lettuce in Imperial Valley than anywhere else on the globe and something just had to be done so that so much of it would not be left on the plate. The Western Protective Association has taken the heroic initiative in the matter.

“Heretofore it was regarded in good form to twist the salad into a large gob and thrust it into the maw even as the hayfork jams the grass into the mow of the barn. Not even the best circles could see anything pleasant in the struggle to drape one's facial foliage around these large, unwieldy quantities of fodder.

“But with this new trick salad fork, with a combination like the old jackknife with a corkscrew and fifty-seven other varieties of tools, we are able to inhale lettuce with comfort and stimulate another of California’s products.”

“The silversmiths are also said to be backing the innovation and that means that the best families will lend themselves to the cause. For many of them have stock in the concern or have mines and will be pleased to have old cutlery out of date. 

“California has taken the orange out of the Christmas stocking and got it on the breakfast table. For a time it was in peril of being put up in prescriptions like spinach by the doctors; but it has turned the corner and can be gedunked at the soda fountains. The whole country is alkalizing its system by orange juice and we are picking the profits for our purses.

“Once we got the world full of prunes; but it woke up one morning and turned to fruit cocktail instead. It got grapefruit in its eye and hope in its heart. The great question a few years back was how to eat an orange. But now the spiffy are acquiring lettuce forks and the price of sterling silver is about to take a sudden advance.” – Calexico Chronicle, 1930

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

French Royal Dining History

 

One popular myth regarding Catherine de Medici, is that she introduced ice cream, sorbets and sherbets to the French, after bringing her personal chefs to France upon her marriage to King Henry II. However, that myth is dispelled in both Elizabeth David’s, “Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices” and Esther B. Aresty’s, “The Exquisite Table – A History of French Cuisine.” Quoting “What’s Cooking, America,” ‘Catherine, fourteen at the time, was accompanied by twelve young ladies-in-waiting near her own age, and, undoubtedly, a large retinue that included cooks and servants to wait on the large party that brought her by ship to Marseilles and cared for the travelers on the overland voyage to the French Court. But as for installing cooks at the court of Francis I to serve her own needs – that would have been bringing coals to Newcastle, and unthinkable in any case with a Monarch like Francis I. At that time his court was far more elegant than any court in Italy.’

Napoleon I Bolted Food When He Ate and

Catherine de Medici Was a Heavy Eater

⚜️A 2nd Debut Article originally shared in 2017⚜️

Although furnished as an advertisement, a book has just appeared from an authoritative pen which contains a lot of interesting information on the menus of the Kings of France and how they dispatched them, writes a Paris correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger: 

The great Napoleon, we are told, did not waste much time at the table. His schedule was three minutes for coffee, ten for luncheon and half an hour for dinner, without conversation. In other words, the author says: “He bolted his food, to which he owed the disease which took him to an early grave.” 

Francois I and Henri II are described as having been only poor eaters; but Catherine de Medici seems to have been, on the contrary, a tremendous gourmand. She was especially partial to kidneys and to a light poultry dish, to which, on one occasion, as a contemporary chronicler records, she did such ample justice that she nearly succumbed. 

Louis XVI, like Louis XIV, who would often have a substantial meal served up in the middle of the night, was a big feeder. He had what was called “the appetite of the Bourbons.” He, like Napoleon, did not eat; he bolted his food. But few people in the audience know what is going on behind the drop curtain, and it is probably just as well they don't. – San Francisco Call, 1911

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

WWI French Rationing Etiquette

“Less Cake for Paris – 

And Tea Shops’ New Closing Days” …

Chef pastry cooks have for centuries been known around the world for their delicious delicacies, as shown in this vintage American advertisement.

PARIS, Thursday. – War economies are to be begun at once in the tea-shops. A meeting of the Pastry cooks' Union of Paris, at which that of Marseilles is also represented, has decided to close all tea shops and pastry cooks' shops twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Moreover, the pastry cooks, after consultation with the Minister of Commerce, have decided to bake no more cakes containing cream or iced with sugar. Finally, a resolution was passed that, “except at meal times, no customer will be entitled to sit down to eat cakes.” Presumably, tea-time will be included among meal times. Although it was never actually said in the first place, “let them eat cake” so much for Parisians now.

A great number of Paris laundries are now closing down owing to the shortage of coal, and many laundries are being turned into munition factories. If I may speak for myself, my washerwoman has just announced that she is closing down her laundry till the end of the war, land is going in for munition making as being more profitable. The Union of Master Launderers confirms that a very great many the suburbs. A meeting of the Syndicate de la Blanchisserie will be held next Sunday to consider the situation. —From our own correspondent, the Telegraph, 1/1/1916

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

Gilded Age “Welcome Guests”

“There is a difference between acting as though one had never seen a sugar sifter before, and acting as though one thought this particular sugar sifter a very pretty one.” – A gilded and silver sugar sifter to the right of a cherry fork and to the left of the fruit and berry servers, from the Etiquipedia private library.

 

The Welcome Guest:

Let the Woman Who Aspires to Be One Do All These Things

The ancient law that one must not remark either in praise or blame upon one’s hostess’s belongings, ought to be cut out of every book of etiquette. It may be extremely “good form” for a guest to act as though the loveliest things a woman could place before her are everyday affairs to her, as though the most daintily prepared food was a diurnal happening with her, but it is not good heart. 

There is a difference between acting as though one had never seen a sugar sifter before, and acting as though one thought this particular sugar sifter a very pretty one. There is a happy medium between displaying round-eyed astonishment at pate de foie gras and showing a polite appreciation of it.

As a usual thing, the mere fact that one is a guest means that one’s entertainers have brought forth their prettiest linen and china, their daintiest silver and their clearest glass, to do one honor. It is only courteous to show an appreciation of it all by an admiring word. It is a compliment to the hostess’s culinary skill to ask her for a recipe or to testify in some other way to a liking for her viands.

Of course, every woman of good breeding will be extremely careful to observe the family rules about meals and the like. She will not demand services from the maid which the other members of the household do not have. She will never be late to breakfast, unless it is the rule of the establishment that each one shall breakfast when he or she pleases. She will endeavor to be “one of the family” in her interest in those things which interest the others, and her assumption for the time of all the family ways. 

But she will conscientiously avoid being one of the family, if that means being drawn into family disputes, hearing family quarrels or being treated to a view of the family skeleton. And having once been a guest in a house, no well-bred woman will ever allow herself afterwards to indulge in unfriendly criticism of those in it. – New York World, 1894

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