1830’s-40’s Table Etiquette Changes

Butter knives, shown above with antique butter dishes and butter forks, were new to tables in the 1830’s- 1840’s. Butter forks and butter picks came later in the 1800’s. Prior to butter knives and individual butter spreaders being introduced, it was very common for diners to butter their bread with their thumbs. This always leaves me to wonder, bemusedly, how common it was for diners to then lick the butter from their thumbs. 

A giant leap in table etiquette was made from the late 1830’s to 1875 due to the rise in use of the table fork, the lower saucers with rings in them created for tea, chocolate and coffee cups, as opposed to the deeper bowl-like, ringless saucers in use for years, along with the introduction of butter knives to the table:

 “Everybody was accustomed, twenty or thirty years since, to use the knife to carry food to the mouth, because the fork of the day was not adapted to the purpose. Since the introduction of the four-tined silver fork, it has so entirely supplanted the knife, that the usage of the latter, in that way, is not only superfluous, but is regarded as a vulgarism. 

Another example is the discontinuance of the custom of turning tea or coffee from the cup into the saucer. Although small plates were frequently employed to set the cup in, they were not at all in general use; and even when they were used, the tea or coffee was likely to be spilled upon the cloth. The habit, likewise, of putting one’s knife into the butter arose from the fact that the butter-knife proper had not been thought of. Such customs as these, once necessitated by circumstances, are now obviously inappropriate.” —Scribner’s Monthly, 1875

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