More Service Plate Etiquette

Service plates or place plates can easily elevate the look of one’s table. “The service plate remains upon the table until the dish is served and forms a foundation plate for both the cocktail and the soup.” – “Service plates,” “place plates” or “chargers” are now left by some hosts and hostesses, until the dessert course because it is used as a decorative part of the place setting.

Rules for the Service Plate

The first handsome service plate, set at the cover at the beginning of dinner, remains unchanged until it is removed just before the first hot course. The little salpicon or canapé is removed on its own small plate; the oysters on theirs; and if a cold bouillon is served the bouillon cup and saucer are removed together. If the soup is hot, the service plate will be removed before it is served, and the soup plate will stand on a dinner plate, which will be removed with it, and on its removal a second service plate will be slipped into the vacant place, so that in front of the guest there may never be a bare space of tablecloth. This rule of providing a service plate between every course is adhered to only where the hostess has an abundance of these beautiful plates, and wishes to please her guests by their variety. For the ordinary formal dinner one handsome service plate is enough, and this may be left in place only until the service of the meat course.— The Boston Cooking School Magazine, 1920

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

On Early 20th C. American Cookery

From, “Breakfasts, Lunches and Dinners, how to plan them, how to serve them, how to behave at them, how to behave at them: a book for school and home” by the Boston Cooking-School Magazine

To the Woman in the Home

Some years ago a witty and well-known writer deplored the fact that, in every block of twenty houses, twenty dinners were being cooked by twenty women, involving waste of coal and waste of energy, instead of having the twenty families go to a public dining-hall. But where is the dining-hall, hotel, or restaurant, whose meals, when partaken of three times a day for week after week, month after month, year after year, do not produce the sense of intolerable monotony and of everything tasting alike? Where are the hotel and restaurant habitués whose hearts do not hanker and whose mouths do not water for “home food and home cooking?”

Then a newer school of economists arises, to tell us that the “cost of coal” standard— the money standard in anything has to give place to the psychic standard, the wholesome pleasure that transcends its money cost. The home table, the family meals, are a source of this pleasure. The woman in the home, who thinks of everybody’s tastes, who provides for everybody’s needs and idiosyncrasies, has in her hands the bestowal of much solid comfort and happiness in the family life. We might almost go so far as to say that when the home and family meals go, the family will go too, the bond will be weakened which so curiously depends on the breaking of bread together.

To the Woman in the Home then, this book is especially offered for the help it is hoped it will bring her. The thanks of the writer are due to the publishers of American Cookery for permission to include many menus and recipes which appeared in that magazine. Also she desires to acknowledge her indebtedness to the publishers of The Queen’s Work, St. Louis, Missouri, in which first appeared a briefer and less detailed list of the foods included in the tables of the last section of this book.— From “The Boston Cooking-School Magazine Company,” 1920

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

Meal Service Etiquette

 Meaning of “Serve,” “Offer,” and “Remove”


In the foregoing paragraphs the words “serve,” “offer,” and “remove” have been frequently used, and for the sake of clearness these will be explained in detail.

The waitress “serves” when she places the food, etc., serves before the guest without what may be called any cooperation on his part, beyond passively receiving it. In this way the waitress may serve the soup or bouillon, the individual plate of meat or fish, the salad, the after dinner coffee. In the dinner or luncheon à la Russe everything is served, that is, placed before the guest, by the one who waits. Such placing of dishes is done by the waitress with her right hand, while she stands behind and to the right of the guest.

Dishes are “offered” when the guest helps himself. Thus when the meat platter is passed, or the dishes of vegetables, or anything else to which the guest helps himself, these are said to be offered. Offering is invariably done from the left, so that the guest has the right hand free. The waitress stands behind and to the left of the guest, and offers the platter, or the dish on the salver, with her left hand, so that the guest may more con veniently help himself with his right.

                                         

Dishes are “removed” from the individual cover when the course is finished, and the plates have to be taken away to make room for the next. The waitress may re move from either the right or the left side, whichever is the more convenient. Thus, at a square table, seating two at each side, she will naturally prefer to remove from the ends, rather than from between the seated couple, hence she will remove from the right of one and the left of the other. The only point to be observed is that the waitress uses the hand to remove with that corre sponds to the side of the guest behind whom she stands. If she stands at his left side, she removes with her left hand; if she stands at his right, she removes with her right hand. Otherwise the process of removing a plate may be very awkward and disagreeable. See illustrations of the wrong and the right way to remove. – From the Boston Cooking School Magazine, 1923

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

Trendy Tables Trashed in ‘29

Stick with what is “tried and true” instead of trying something new. The old rules are old, because the my have worked well for so long! … Above, suggested service plates, along with plates for fish, salad and dessert.— From the book, “Table Etiquette, Menus and Much Besides” by The Boston Cooking School

Table Etiquette— Within the last decade there has been a revolution in table (and other) etiquette. So many have been the changes and new departures, and often so unwarranted by good taste, that it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between the wheat of right usage and the tares of bad manners. In this book the changes are dealt with as follows:

1. The large number of new rules, which because of their reasonableness and good sense are here to stay, are set forth in contrast with those that are older and less excellent.

2. The old rules that have not been modified are presented as still obligatory, and likely, because of their propriety, to remain so.

3. New freedoms that are excessive and in bad taste, are named with the counsel to “play safe” by avoiding them.

4. Where a new custom is in flat contradiction to an old, good one, the new is often shown to be permissive, rather than prescribed. — By Mary D. Chambers, The Boston Cooking School, 1929

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