Dining Etiquette from the 15th C. On

Jacopo del Sellaio, an Italian painter of the fifteenth century, depicts King Ahasuerus at a table set up on a dais with a heavy sideboard in the background. The diners, wearing elaborate hats, sit in the courtyard and are approached by groups who wish to speak with the King.

In Europe, in the late fifteenth century, there was a definite rule that it was wrong to grab food with two hands and that meat should be taken with three fingers and not too much put in the mouth at the same time. There was, however, a common joke in the early sixteenth century that three fingers in the salt could be taken as the sign of a villain- for salt, owing to its preciousness, was to be taken from the cellar with a knife. It was also not considered good manners to lick greasy fingers or rub them on a jacket instead of using a piece of bread or a napkin.

Americans born in the elite circle in the seventeenth century had the charming custom of wearing elaborate and highly fashionable hats to dinner, a custom dating from fourteenth-century Europe and shown in the photo above. Hats were removed only when a toast was given; to be uncovered at meals was, until the eighteenth century, not etiquette.

In the mid-eighteenth century, however, the eating habits of the lower classes in many countries, including America, were still on a rather primitive level. Farmers and their families stood around the table while they served themselves with a wooden spoon from a large wooden bowl. They took their meat in their fingers and put it on a piece of bread that was used as a trencher, then ate it sitting or standing anywhere in the room. Fingers and knives were the tools, and forks were by no means commonplace. According to Helen Sprackling's book Customs on the Table Top, an Englishwoman traveling in America in 1827 wrote to her sister that “Americans, male and female, were invariable and indefatigable eaters with their knives.”

Still, some distinctions were made by those who cared to do things properly, as noted in The School of Good Manners, by Eleazar Moody: “Bite not thy bread, but break it; but not with slovenly fingers nor the same wherewith thou takest up thy meat. Dip not thy knife upright in thy hand, but sloping and lay it down at thy right hand, with the blade upon the plate.”— Patricia Easterbrook Roberts

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