Late 17th C. Etiquette in England

By Charles II's reign, a dessert course had developed. Charles loved fruit and was one of the first people in the country to eat a pineapple.  This painting depicts Charles II being presented with a pineapple, a rare and exotic fruit for the time period.

The reduction in the number of servants (in England) after the Restoration led also to a reduction in ceremony during meals: all the panoply of bowing, kissing and kneeling, of sewers, carvers, cupbearers and gentlemen waiters disappeared. The butler absorbed the jobs of the yeomen of the buttery, ewery and pantry, beginning the rise that was to lead to his 19th-century eminence. Footmen, from a lower social class and therefore cheaper, were brought in to wait at less important tables. By the end of the century, they, helped by extra pages, were waiting at the first table under the butler and the under-butler. Both carving and distributing the meat were particular honours reserved for the master of the house or distinguished guests.

Gentlemen were still supposed to know the exact way to carve any dish set before them. Robert May includes a chapter on "The most Exact, or A la Mode Ways of Carving' in his Accomplisht Cook of 1660. The diners helped themselves, or each other (often the gentlemen served the ladies first), on to plates that had been warmed by the fire in an iron frame. 'When serving' said Antoine de Courtin in his book of manners of 1672, 'one must alway give away the best portion and keep the smallest, and touch nothing except with the fork.' Primarily, guests would help themselves to what they could reach (known retrospectively as service à la française): if they wished for something else, a servant was summoned to fetch it, though it was not considered good manners to do this too often.

Antoine de Courtin further instructed the diner to take food only from the part of the dish opposite you; still less should you take the best pieces, even though you might be the last to help yourself. Also, in many places, spoons are brought in with the dishes, and these serve only for taking soup and sauce… You should not eat soup from the dish, but put it neatly of your plate.... To wipe your fingers on your bread, again is very improper ... . Formerly one was permitted to dip one's bread into the sauce, provided only that one had not already bitten it. Nowadays that would be a kind of rusticity. Formerly, one was allowed to take from one's mouth what one could not eat and drop it on the floor.... Now that would be very disgusting.— From the National Trust’s, “The Art of Dining: A History of Cooking and Eating,” by Sara Paston-Williams, 1993

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