Gilded Age Corn on Cob Etiquette

Numerous corn forks, corn holders, corn “strippers” (also marketed as corn “scrapers” and corn “slitters”) were patented from the Gilded Age well into the mid-20th century. 

Corn Fork

Corn on the cob, even today, is not a normal item at a formal meal— it is too messy. Yet, some Victorian hostesses did serve corn on the cob. There were several ways of handling corn on the cob. One was to use the silver cob holders shown. These worked exactly like the plastic cob holders the fastidious use on picnics to day.

At least one 1880s etiquette book favored serving corn on the cob, noting, “A lady who gives many elegant dinners at Newport causes to be laid beside the plate of each guest two little silver-gilt spike-like arrangements. Each person then places these in either end of the corn-cob and eats his corn holding it by two silver handles.” Some etiquette writers advised people to use a knife to cut the kernels off the cob and then eat the loose kernels with a fork.

The corn fork reflects another approach. The center portion of this large fork was designed to be used in scraping the corn kernels from the cob. The fork could then be used to eat the loose kernels. As a design, it was a success, the scraper worked quite well. How ever, it was a product for which there was no real market. Few diners wanted to go to that much trouble for corn so the fork sold very poorly and today is almost impossible to find.— From “Forgotten Elegance,” 2003

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

Edwardian Table Manners in England

Oyster forks in the Delmonico pattern – “Oysters are another puzzle in eating. I have often seen young ladies, who from their actions one might judge to be dining out for the first time, try to cut the bivalve in half; and sometimes the results would be very amusing. Oysters should, of course, be eaten whole, balanced on a fork. Then again, thoughtless people will often smother said food in cayenne pepper and nearly choke themselves when trying to digest it.” 

He had been a waiter in a smart West End hotel, London, and had come to Los Angeles, California, for his health. “Speaking of manners,” he said, pointing to an article in a recent woman’s magazine upon that subject while we were eating at the same table in the Vegetarian Cafe, “it is queer the atrocious manners people, even in so-called polite society, exhibit in public, especially at the public dining table.”

“Apropos of what are your remarks” we inquired timidly. “So far as my experience goes,” he went on, “I have seen a great deal of bad manners in waiting on public dining-tables in London, some through ignorance of table etiquette; others because they were careless of the laws governing table politeness. He lifted up his eyes in a somewhat critical way.

“For instance both asparagus and Indian corn should be eaten with the fingers. I have often seen such tackled with knife and fork. Of course, this is not a crime, but how embarrassing it made those thus misusing the knife to discover their fellow-diners using their fingers. What to do with the knife they knew not! They could not very well lay it back on the table and to leave it on the plate would cause them to be minus what they would need for the next course. In such cases, I have often mercifully removed the used tools and supplied clean ones in their place. Of course, I was usually tipped for my trouble.

“Again, olives are usually a puzzle to diners. These should be taken in the fingers from the dish, and eaten between courses. I have seen amateur diners-out place them on the plate with whatever dish they were eating, and frantically strive to cut them into pieces with a knife; and often the olive flies off into a neighbor’s lap. Tipping one’s soup plate toward one is a common error. It should be tipped away from the eater.

“Oysters are another puzzle in eating. I have often seen young ladies, who from their actions one might judge to be dining out for the first time, try to cut the bivalve in half; and sometimes the results would be very amusing. Oysters should, of course, be eaten whole, balanced on a fork. Then again, thoughtless people will often smother said food in cayenne pepper and nearly choke themselves when trying to digest it.

“Then there is the finger-bowl. One would think that this was such a common thing that people knew what it was for. But I saw one man at a hunt dinner in a country house in England actually pick up the bowl and drink the water therefrom, to the great astonishment of the other guests.”– Los Angeles Herald, 1908

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