Etiquette for Eating Green Corn

“… when folks, even the most refined folks - folks that won’t even permit a poodle to sleep with them - start in on their boiled corn part of the menu, past precedent is thrown to the winds. The book of rules is consigned, with all other etiquette, to a warmer place, and every man is content to get his corn off the cob in the fastest and most convenient way in which he is able to operate.” –Even with the plethora of tools and forks for eating corn from the cob, and the seemingly endless 19th century creativity of design elements in making those tools and forks, inventors and designers never quite came up with a solution for making the task of eating corn from the cob appear “civilized.”  Above is a selection of patented tools, including strippers or scrapers, forks and holders, designed for eating corn on the cob.

GREEN CORN – HOW TO EAT IT!

The world is able to classify a man by two things his table manners and the style of his hand baggage. For instance, if, in your travels, you encounter an individual at a hotel who can cover his knife with mashed potatoes to the hilt and then get them all off without injury to his tonsils, you immediately have this man’s social number. On the other hand, if he carries a canvas telescope or “knee knocker” reinforced by a part of his wife’s clothes line, then you are also able to classify him properly.

You may have an inkling of a man's “bringing up” by the tools he chooses in eating his pie, or by the manner in which he muffles his exhaust in eating soup. Yet when it comes to green corn, every known rule is violated.

Some ways for eating certain things are planned for economical reasons. Thus the country hotel keeper serves his olives in a bottle and expects you to get them out with your fingers. He also furnishes you with possibly a grapefruit or orange in the morning and expects you to keep your ears clean with a paper napkin. There are recognized ways of taking soup into the system and these ways all call for a limit to the noise zone.

But when folks, even the most refined folks - folks that won’t even permit a poodle to sleep with them - start in on their boiled corn part of the menu, past precedent is thrown to the winds. The book of rules is consigned, with all other etiquette, to a warmer place, and every man is content to get his corn off the cob in the fastest and most convenient way in which he is able to operate.

No, neighbor, we shall never have to worry about any styles relative to denuding the cob of its succulent kernels. We may have worried whether it is proper to remove jelly from the nose with a fork or a napkin, and it may have annoyed us to remember whether it is better form to sneeze under or over the table, but we shall never have to tax our brain on new rules for eating green corn from the cob. It is a catch-as-catch-can proposition and the farm hand is just as refined and just as mannerly at this delectable pursuit as the guy who learned his table manners from a young woman’s seminary. – Imperial Valley Press, 1915

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