Setting a Table for the King

His Majesty's cover for dinner at the French Embassy in 1939 – French flatware is traditionally set facing down on the table and thus monogrammed on the backs of the handles.

This Table, Set For the King, Starts U.S. Experts Talking

Etiquette authorities, trying to determine how tables should be set for wining and and dining royalty when King George XI and Queen Elizabeth visit the United States in June, are interested in this picture. It shows the cover set for His Majesty at dinner given recently in the French embassy in London. Its especial interest is that it isn't exactly what American authorities had in mind.

The glasses, the turned-down-silver and an ash tray caused most comment. Eyebrows weren’t raised at the number of glasses– but at their placing. It’s an old American custom to put glasses above and to the right of the knife– not above the service plate.

At the dinner given by President M. Lebrun of France, and Mme. Lebrun, however, the water goblet was placed to the left front, near the entree fork. Behind it came the champagne glass. Right front was the first wine glass, on which His Majesty’s place card was laid– so he would not have to bend over to read it. Other glasses were two more for white wine, one for red wine, and another, in the center, for the Romanee-Conti, famed Burgundy vintage of which 200 bottles were sent from Paris especially for this dinner.

The turned-down silver was a surprise in this country. Never, said one authority, is silver turned down. Glasses, perhaps– they might collect a little dust. A waiter will turn them up before serving starts. But the choicely-patterned silver? It can’t happen here.

The ash tray is pointed out some-what gleefully. It’s a long-needed concession smokers, one authority explains. He points out that until a few years ago ash trays would have appeared only at the end of the meal.– By Joan Durham, AP Feature Service Writer, May 8, 1939

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

Which Utensils to Use and When

Regardless of whether or not there is a menu card, one should be able to “read” and navigate a place setting, simply by looking at the utensils placed at one’s setting. – Image from 

What Have We Here?: The Etiquette and Essentials of Lives Once Lived, from the Georgian Era through the Gilded Age and Beyond...

When it comes to formal parties, the most common asked question on proper etiquette is: “At the dinner table, how do I know which silverware to use?” Maura J. Graber, who has been teaching manners to children and adults since 1990, and is the director of The R.S.V.P. Institute of Etiquette, offers this simple tip: “You are supposed to use the silverware from the outside-in. Use the silverware furthest from the plate on either side, and then use the utensils closer to the plate, as each course requires.” However, you cannot always count on the table settings being laid correctly. As Maura says “If you know what the usage is and where the placement is supposed to be, you can navigate your way regardless of what the circumstances are.”

The array of silverware laid out at a dinner table can be intimidating but learning the proper uses for each utensil doesn't have to be. The key characteristics of the most common types of silverware that you will find at a formal dinner are as follows:

Dinner Fork: is usually the largest one at a place setting.

Salad Fork: occasionally has an extra-thick tine on the far left (for cutting lettuce). 

Fish Fork: the smallest fork that is set to the left side of the plate.

Appetizer Fork: the smallest fork and also the only one that is supposed to be placed on the right side, usually resting in the bowl of the soup spoon.

Dinner Knife: is usually the largest one at a place setting.

Salad Knife: shorter than the dinner knife, with a rounded blade.

Fish Knife: a bit shorter than the dinner knife, and looks like a sword or scimitar. 

Steak Knife: sharper than the dinner knife and it usually has a jagged edge.

Soup Spoon: the largest spoon, placed on the right side with the knives and can be found in a variety of oval or round shapes and sizes.

Teaspoon: this should only be used to stir coffee or tea. It should not be at a dinner place setting unless there is some course it is needed for, like sorbet.

Dessert Spoon, Fork &/or Knife: if set prior to the meal being served, they are placed horizontally above your dinner plate in the U.S. In British and European settings, they can often be found placed vertically, closest to the plate.

Even if you're not skilled in the proper etiquette of which piece of silverware to use during which course do not despair. As Lillian Eichler so eloquently put it in her book “Today's Etiquette,” published in 1941 (back when properness was not only appreciated but also insisted upon), “If a blunder is made– why, let it pass! It is no very great crime to make a trifling mistake in table conduct, and if one's manner is free from self-consciousness and embarrassment it is quite probable that no one will notice it.” 

This does not mean that you are free from learning it though because as she goes on to say, “By this we do not mean that the new etiquette recommends carelessness at the table. It recommends, rather... a carelessness of manner that suggests a familiarity with these niceties. The one way to achieve this poise or assurance is to practice the niceties and courtesies of dining in private as in public, so that the correct thing becomes instinctive rather then studied.”

So in other words, dinner parties are meant to be fun. Do not let one little mishap such as using the meat fork to eat the salad, ruin your whole night. Do not concentrate so hard on which piece of utensil to use that you do not take part in the conversation but become viewed as a withdrawn or worse yet, a bored, dinner guest. The best way to avoid this is to practice beforehand. – By Maura J. Graber on Expert Village, 2000

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

Fish Knife Etiquette and Pretentions

“The fish knife is the epitome of gentility. With a scalloped shaped blade, the end is just pointy enough to pick small bones from a cooked fish, and the flat blade is useful for sliding between the flesh and skin.” - The fish knife, third from the right, is before the dinner and salad knives in the order of use at a Continental place setting. The fish course, in formal Continental dining, is always served before the main course and the salad course is always served afterward, just the opposite as in American dining.

Is the fish knife our most pretentious utensil?

Now largely forgotten, the fish knife comes from an age where table etiquette was front and centre, leading to nearly two hundred different eating utensils being designed for different courses and foods. Adopted by an aspiring middle class wishing to dine like the gentrified, the odd utensil was later targeted by high society as an object of ridicule, as Colin Bisset writes.

The fish knife is the epitome of gentility. With a scalloped shaped blade, the end is just pointy enough to pick small bones from a cooked fish, and the flat blade is useful for sliding between the flesh and skin.

The fish knife first appeared in the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain. Thanks to thriving industry and the wealth generated by an expanding Empire, the rising middle-classes aspired to a gentrified way of dining. From the 1850s, dinners were usually served a la russe, which meant as separate courses as opposed to the previous practice of putting all dishes on the table at the same time. This led to the introduction of a variety of implements to help distinguish the serving and eating of everything from oysters to elaborate puddings, making negotiating a dinner a nightmare for those lacking knowledge of table etiquette.

It was a boon for cutlery manufacturers who were able to not only to design and market nearly two hundred eating implements but several styles for each one. (Washing up after these long dinners was certainly an arduous task.) The fish knife was an object of fussy design, solving a problem that was not truly present. It is interesting that they managed to last so long when the other cutlery inventions of the Victorian table have largely vanished.

A fish knife was an essential component for the fish course and they were quickly adapted for dining tables across the newly industrialised world. Made from either plated or solid silver, because ordinary metal blades were believed to blacken when coming into contact with fish, they offered hosts the opportunity to show the world that they could afford to dine in the finest fashion. With ever-more fanciful shapes, some engraved with fish-scales, others as curvaceous as a fish itself, the maritime theme was de rigeur.

The thought of an ordinary silver knife being able to serve the purpose just as well seems to have been politely put to one side. A larger version was often part of a set for the filleting and serving of a fish meant for several diners.

By the end of the First World War, they fell from fashion, at least for the upper classes who had always found them rather vulgar and preferred to use two forks to fillet a fish. As the century progressed, they quickly became an object of ridicule. However, the invention of stainless steel in the 1920s meant that they could be manufactured cheaply and thus anyone who aspired to a posh kind of gentility would be in possession of a set.

Snobbish writers such as poet John Betjeman mocked their use, branding the utensil non-U (the term coined by Nancy Mitford to differentiate those with class from those with pretensions to it). Betjeman's famous poem of 1958 “How To Get On In Society” is a catalogue of names and terms used by the upwardly-mobile, at first sight gently mocking but actually (as Betjeman was) quite savage. 'Phone for the fish knives, Norman,' starts the poem, immediately highlighting a raft of non-U words: phone, fish knives and Norman.

The fish knife was an object of fussy design, solving a problem that was not truly present. It is interesting that they managed to last so long when the other cutlery inventions of the Victorian table have largely vanished.

A visit to any antique shop will however always turn up many sets—many will never have been used. Perhaps, like the fondue set and the parfait dish, their time will come again. They might indeed be reclaimed as symbols for the class warrior and those who despise the snobbism implicit in certain objects.

They remain, however, as an interesting throwback to a time when how one ate was almost more important than what one ate.— By Colin Bisset for Design, 2013

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

Place Settings and Good Taste

The salad knife, cutting side toward the plate, is put next to the plate on the right. A silver bladed knife is especially correct for salad– but if you prefer knifeless salad eating, choose your salad accordingly and omit the knife.

Choice of Silver is Declaration of Good Taste

The silver on your table is a declaration of your taste. Whether it be sterling or plate, there is, in an excellent pattern and in the perfect form and proportion of the utensils, an unmistakeable aristocracy that gives a proud hearted splendor and distinction to your table. In your linens, you achieve the desired background for your tables and in your glass and china you have unlimited means for the expression of beautiful form. Then, in your silver utensils, you add the important accessories which are beautiful and decorative and which, because of their constant usefulness, are essential in furthering the “art of gracious living” and of table etiquette. 

Will the tops of the handles fit perfectly into the center of the palm of the hand? Determine if the handles are comfortable to hold and examine all of the pieces, when choosing your flatware.

Study All Pieces 

When you have determined upon the pattern of your silver, you must supplement its beauty by its practicality. For instance, when you choose a pattern of silver, you should examine all the pieces to be sure you are going to like the shapes of all the rest of the pieces. Determine if the handles are comfortable to hold and that the tops of the handles of the knives and forks fit perfectly into the center of the palm of the hand. Then ascertain, if possible, if the pattern is apt to be “discontinued.” 

The amount of flat silver to be placed beside each plate depends upon the menu to be served. The question of which fork or spoon to choose is no longer a problem if the table is properly set, since the outside implement is always the one you are meant to use. In setting the table, therefore, you put the fork or spoon that is to be used last next to the plate, and mentally continue through the courses backward, until the implements for the first course are on the outside or farthest from the plate. 

Placing of Forks and Knives Correctly

The dinner fork (or meat fork) is put next to the plate, prongs up, and about two and one-half inches from the edge of the table. The salad fork is placed on the left of the meat or dinner fork. The salad knife, cutting side toward the plate, is put next to the dinner knife (or meat knife) which is closest to the plate on the right. A silver bladed knife is especially correct for salad - but if you prefer knifeless salad eating, choose your salad accordingly and omit the knife. 

For “Continental Dining” the order of the courses is reversed and the dinner fork is placed to the left of the salad fork ,while the dinner knife goes to the right of the salad knife.

  

Spoons at Right 

The spoons are placed on the right of the knife in the order of the courses in which they are to be used.  The soup spoon, then, would be the spoon farthest from the knife. Some authorities affirm that it is correct to place only five pieces of sliver on the table for each cover, and that if more are required they may be brought in with the course for which they are needed. 

Glasses are put above or at the upper right of the knives. At luncheon or supper, if you serve iced tea or coffee in a tall glass, the long spoon is placed on the table beside it. – La Habra Star, 1935

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