Manners are for Holidays and Everyday

Always use the soup spoon provided to eat as much soup as you can, before picking up the handled-cup to drink from it, leaving the used spoon resting on the accompanying saucer -“Soup should be dipped away, never toward the individual. If clear soup is served in cups, a small round bowled spoon is used, or the bouillon may be sipped from the cup.”

In Your Market Basket: A Lesson in Holiday Table Manners

Every newspaper editor often finds this kind of a query in the mail; 

Dear Editor—My early training in etiquette was much neglected. Now I have made a fortune, travel considerably and am often embarrassed by my Ignorance about table manners. Will you aid me? – Signed “Worried

Table manners are, of course, for the home table all of the year around, but it is at the holiday season when dinner engagements are most numerous, that a great many persons require a little extra preparedness. 

The experienced hostess will see that forks and spoons are placed in the order in which they are to be used. If the dinner is of many courses, the appropriate silver is laid with each course. 

Soup should be dipped away, never toward the individual. If clear soup is served in cups, a small round bowled spoon is used, or the bouillon may be sipped from the cup.

The knife should never be held in the left hand, but the fork may be transferred to the right hand. The English way of keeping the fork in the left hand is the present fashion among very fastidious society folk. 

At the end of the course the knife and fork should be placed side by side with the tips in the middle of the plate and the handles resting on its edge. —From Kiddi Bye in the San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram, December, 1916

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