Etiquette for Feeding Romance

Comes now the silly season, or the romantic season, or the wonderful season, or the lyrical season, depending on where you stand in these matters. And it might be well, at this point, to look at some groceries with an eye to their R.Q., or Romantic Quotient.

... And Another Thing

Now springtime is approaching like a runaway choo-choo, and we'd all better get ready. Comes now the silly season, or the romantic season, or the wonderful season, or the lyrical season, depending on where you stand in these matters. And it might be well, at this point, to look at some groceries with an eye to their R.Q., or Romantic Quotient.

This is no new endeavor. Since people and food were invented, which was at about the same time, people have been interested in the romantic or - hopefully – aphrodisiac properties of what they eat.

But I bring sad tidings. If you have been depending heavily on Arabian skunk or Roman goose tongue or the brains of love- making sparrows - as did the ancients - you might as well forget it. They do no good. Nor, apparently, do the more personal parts of the poisonous puffer fish, no matter what the modern Japanese think. Nor does anything else.

And, to quote Mimi Sheraton. who has made quite a study of these things, and I wish all research projects were as interesting, “I have yet to find the food one bite of which will cause me to drop my fork and make straight for the bedroom.”

Still, it might not be without value (this is a phrase we scholarly writers like to use be cause it sounds more scholarly than “it might be valuable”) to consider what foods or dishes are definitely UN-aphrodisiac in their effect. On whoever is watching you eat, that is. And while I am no expert in matters of the heart, I once wrote an Etiquette Book in which I touched briefly on the less attractive aspects of ingesting food.

So let's plunge in.

Anything you must spit out some of, such as grapes or olives with pits in them, isn't particularly romantic fodder. You can, however, swallow the grape seeds, and I don't think they’ll hurt you any, even if your mother did tell you they'd give you appendicitis. At least, when you attack a piece of grappa cheese, the rind of which is solid grape seeds, you're supposed to eat them, else you display a certain lack of savoir faire. Next time, don't order it. 

Corn, of course, presents a nearly insoluble problem. When a girl eats it on the cob, her lipstick tends to meld with the butter, on the cob and around her mouth. (On the other hand, if one slices the corn off, one may arouse the suspicion that one’s choppers are not one’s own.)

A lady I know insists on drinking all her drinks except hot coffee through a straw, because she can shape her mouth so prettily around it.

Then there is the sound of spaghetti. This is a welcome sound to the chef who prepared it, for it is the sound of appreciation. But it is not a romantic sound.

Consider, too, the too-fat hamburger, dribbling bits of letutce and mayonnaise down the chin, to leave it smelling like a blue plate salad.

Consider, too, the potency of peanut butter, the scent of which carries three times farther and lasts six times longer than any- thing by Lanvin or Chanel. These are all gustatory truths which must be faced and grappled with.

And yet, to be honest, we must admit that whether or not spaghetti or corn on the cob or even peanut butter is romantic depends to a huge extent on who is eating them. Which is only one of the many lyrical facts about Springtime. – By Peg Bracken, 1965

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