When a Spoon Became Superfluous

Not a superfluous spoon in site… “The teaspoon is restricted to the teacup and that alone.” 1893 – “One of the biggest mistakes I am used to seeing in Competition Tablescaping or Table Setting, is the error of a superfluous spoon at the place settings. If there is not a soup course or anything else that etiquette requires a spoon for, the spoon is an extra appendage unnecessary at the settings and the table loses much needed points.” – Maura J. Graber, Etiquipedia© Site Editor and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette

The teaspoon has been banished from the table of the ultra elegant. Its use has long been forbidden to assist in eating any sort of kernel and soft vegetables, but it survived for a time as an aid to consuming what our grandmothers called “sauce,” and for certain desserts of a custard nature or ices and ice cream. 

Now, its employment is considered, as the fashionable woman told her child, “worse than wicked vulgar” in any such service, and so, like Fatima in the ‘Arabian Nights’ eating her grains of rice, we pick at all those yielding, gelatinous, and elusive substances, with a little fork. The teaspoon is restricted to the teacup and that alone.–New York Times, 1893

 

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