Coffee Etiquette to End Your Jitters

My “Après Lunch Coffee” (or in this case, Cappuccino), was not covered by Miss Manners in this particular column, but it certainly was delicious!

How tea came to be perceived as the official drink of the etiquette business, Miss Manners is not sure. Personally, she would have chosen champagne, preferably with a bit of fresh peach juice in it and a view of the Grand Canal,

But a less exciting addition is in order. Coffee is making great headway on the social scene, what with all those nice copper machines puffing away, and it seems time to review and revise the rules connected with serving coffee under a variety of with all those nice copper machines puffing away, and it seems time to review and revise the rules connected with serving coffee under a variety of conditions.

Here, then, is a coffee schedule for the day -a day less likely to end than to careen straight into the next day.

• Breakfast: This is the only meal at which coffee cups and saucers are properly set on the table from the beginning. Miss Manners hopes to get this rule past those who love coffee during all their meals by stating it early, before they are fully awake.
• At informal breakfasts, mugs may replace cups and saucers, provided no one puts a wet spoon flat on the table, a prohibition that does much to explain why cups have saucers in the first place. The spoon may never be left sticking up inside, even for a second. Don't ask Miss Manners where to put it instead; she always uses a cup and saucer.
• Late morning coffee: This is properly served with bread, sweet or otherwise, and gossip, sweet or otherwise. Mugs are used, as, contrary to popular belief, paper does not hold coffee.
• If the gathering is in someone's house, the person who lives there naturally makes and serves the coffee. If it is in an office, people either take turns or fend for themselves, now that putting a particular employee in charge of fetching coffee for others has become so fraught with unfortunate symbolism.
• Lunch: The rule against serving hot coffee during lunch is admittedly sometimes in conflict with the rule about pleasing one's guests. One way for the individual coffee drinker to get around this is to claim having skipped breakfast, so that starting with coffee represents breakfast.
• Iced coffee is a proper luncheon drink, but the tumbler or stump-stemmed glass in which it is properly served presents the same spoon problem as the coffee mug. Hot coffee may be served at the table with dessert only for an informal lunch; at a formal lunch, coffee service follows the meal, preferably out the dining room door, as at dinner.
• Coffee break: See Morning Coffee, above.
• Teatime: You may well ask what coffee is doing at tea, but it is a customary second offering, although a cold drink may be offered instead in hot weather, and hot chocolate in cold weather.
• That coffee is not the star of a tea party is shown by the fact that the person who pours tea at a tea party (a high honor designated to a distinguished friend) is considered to outrank the person who pours coffee.
• Dinner: The only coffee properly taken at the dinner table is in those households that once were considered conservative but now are thought of as wildly permissive, where the smokers (formerly known as gentlemen) are left at the table to take cigars and port, sometimes accompanied by coffee, while the non-smokers (formerly known as ladies) withdraw for serious conversation. Otherwise, coffee is served away from the table, in demitasses with wee little spoons that keep falling off the itty-bitty saucers. – by Judith Martin, aka “Miss Manners,” in the Press Democrat News, 1993

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

Coffee Klatch Etiquette

The etiquette of the Coffee Klatch consists mainly of being glad you have friends to share your coffee cakes with. On a large tray, place coffee pot, cups, creamer and sugar bowl, enough small plates and small napkins.

Invite Your Friends to a Coffee Party 

By Mrs. Penrose Lyly

Coffee Klatches must have been invented by genial angels. A pot of sparkling coffee, a bowl of glistening sugar, thick cream and a ring of coffee cake fresh from the oven and a few friends, of course, when the winter day darkens to a cold, brisk night, no man or woman has a right to expect more from the kindly gods. 

The etiquette of the Coffee Klatch consists mainly of being glad you have friends to share your coffee cakes with. On a large tray, place coffee pot, cups, creamer and sugar bowl, enough small plates and small napkins. Light your living room fire and put the tray on a small table near it. Draw as many comfortable chairs as you have guests around the coffee table and then snuggle down for a grand afternoon. 

The Coffee Klatch, when held along the lines described above, is a lot like the traditional afternoon tea, of course except that you don't serve any tea. For that very reason, perhaps, you'll find it a welcome change in your entertainment routine. And you might find, too, that it creates a slightly different atmosphere than the afternoon tea creates; less conducive to gossip, more productive of  “homey” comfort. – Every Week Magazine, 1933

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

Coffee Etiquette in Japan

“That’s for the sugar... The handle starts on the left so the customer can hold the cup steady with the left hand while stirring in sugar with the right. Once that’s done, the customer turns the handle clockwise, around the top, so the handle is easy to pick up with the right hand. That’s how we taught customers to drink their coffee.” — Japan coffee shop owner, Yasumi Yamabe

Coffee was hardly an everyday drink when Yasumi Yamabe started his career in the early postwar years. “Oh, coffee was still very much a luxury item then,” he confirmed. “A cup would set you back ¥50 when a portion of oden (stewed foods) or oshiruko (sweet red-bean soup) cost only ¥5. Most people weren’t familiar with coffee, so we had to educate them. Almost everyone in those days took their coffee with cream and sugar.”

No one knows exactly when coffee was introduced to Japan, but the first beans were probably brought in by 17th-century Dutch traders for their own use at their trading post at Dejima, near Nagasaki. Contact with foreigners was strictly limited, so if any Japanese were able to sample their coffee, it would have only been the few merchants, translators and prostitutes allowed to visit Dejima. 

The oldest known account of a Japanese drinking coffee was written in 1804, in which a man named Shokusanjin Ota described boarding a foreign ship and being served a drink called “kauhii.” It tasted quite unpleasant, he said, and was made by mixing sugar into water with a powder of roasted beans.

Formal imports of coffee began in 1858, and the first Japanese coffeehouse of record, the Kahiichakan in Tokyo, is said to have opened in 1888. Drinking coffee became fashionable among the intelligentsia and the upper middle class, but remained something of a rarity. 

Imports were halted in 1944, during the war, as coffee was branded both a zeitakuhin (extravagance) and a tekikoku inryō(enemy drink). It wasn’t until after the war, and the liberalization of imports in 1960, that Japan got on its way to becoming a major coffee-drinking nation. Today Japan is the third largest importer of coffee, after the United States and Germany.

At the All Japan Coffee Association, executive director Toyohide Nishino responded to the question of why the spoons are placed where they are when coffee is served in Japan. “Very often the inquiry comes from the executive offices of a large company, with the caller saying something like, ‘Our chairman is particular about manners and wants to make sure we’re doing it right.’ But actually there is no single accepted way to serve coffee in Japan.”

Even in the coffee industry, companies serve guests differently. Visitors to UCC (Ueshima Coffee Co., Ltd.) headquarters in Kobe get their coffee with the handle on the left, while at Key Coffee, in Tokyo, the handle is on the right.

Some hypothesise​ about the tea ceremony, in which the cup is placed so its front, or decorated side, faces the guest so its beauty may be enjoyed. The guest, in turn, expresses humility by turning the cup before drinking so as not to place one’s lips on the most beautiful part of the vessel. Nishino found the idea interesting, but concurred with Yamabe that having the handle on the left is for convenience when adding sugar. He noted that coffee shops used to offer kakuzatō (sugar cubes), which take more effort to stir into coffee than today’s standard of granulated sugar.

The oldest reference found was in a 1922 book titled “Seiyo-ryori no Tadashii Tabekata” (“The Correct Way to Eat Western Food”). In somewhat archaic language, Kaneko Tezuka, who was a professor at Japan Women’s University, wrote that when coffee is offered after a meal it should be served in small chawan (cups) with the totte (handle) turned to the left and the saji (spoon) placed in front. Unfortunately, Tezuka didn’t offer a reason for this placement, nor did she speak to its origins.

In any case, the orientation of the coffee-cup handle may well become moot as tastes and consumption patterns change. Today, taking coffee burakku (“black,” without milk or sugar) is the most common preference, practiced by 38.3% of Japanese coffee drinkers. In addition, there is a clear shift away from genteel service and toward take-out, with convenience stores grabbing a growing share of the coffee market. Seven-Eleven, which offers self-serve coffee for just ¥100, expects to sell a whopping 700 million cups this fiscal year — and in disposable cups with no handle at all. — From the Japan Times, 2013

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

Etiquette "As She is Practiced"

Etiquette is, in short, doing a lot of queer things for fear that if you don’t a lot of people will conclude that you are lacking in refinement, if not common sense.

A writer in the Baltimore Sun has some interesting sidelights on etiquette that contain more truth than poetry: 

“Etiquette is preceding a lady up the stairs and tagging along behind her down the stairs. It is not drinking out of a finger-bowl. It is watching the hostess out of the corner of our eye to see which fork she is using. It is trying to cut the meat off a chicken bone without taking it in your fingers as you do in the bosom of the family. It is leaving your napkin unfolded after a meal to show your hostess that you trust her not to use it again. 

It is burning your tongue with boiling hot coffee rather than pour the coffee into the saucer to cool it. It is answering a formal invitation by speaking of yourself in the third person as though you were somebody else. It is marking a visiting card ‘P. P. C.’ (Pour Prendre Congé) to show that you are going away and ‘P. T. O.’ if you have written something on the back and bending the visiting card in the middle to indicate something or other that at the moment you can’t remember. 

It is, if you are a hostess, having the maid serve you first to prove to your guests that you are not going to poison them without dying, too. It is giving your left arm to a lady so that your right arm is free to use your sword in an emergency. It is waiting for a lady to speak first so that she may have the privilege of cutting you if she wants. It is addressing as ‘Esquire’ anyone to whom you hope to sell life insurance or a bond. It is starting to eat something as soon as you have been helped to it, instead of waiting for everybody to be helped, thereby subtly insinuating to your hostess that her servants are ideal and are going to get around to the others in no time at all. 

Etiquette is, in short, doing a lot of queer things for fear that if you don’t a lot of people will conclude that you are lacking in refinement, if not common sense.” — Editorial Page of Desert Sun News, 1937

 

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

Etiquette, Common Sense and Defiance

One who does not wish to wait till the meal is over before drinking coffee, must either cool it in his saucer or drink it hot, or wait and drink it after breakfast, and all because of the absurd notion that it is not a good manners to pour coffee into your saucer!

Liberty Versus Custom 

Found Under "Household"

Among all the declarations of liberty which American mankind is so fond of making, it seems strange that there is no league, association, party, or other combination to defend honest man against worn-out or absurd customs. For example, will any man tell me why I am forbidden by what is called "good manners" to pour my tea into a saucer, and cool it there? Much reproach has been heaped upon "strong" tea and coffee which properly belongs to "hot" tea and coffee. Everyone knows how much the efficient action of chemical agents is intensified by heat. Scalding tea is far worse than strong tea; but to be both scalding and strong is an attack upon the human body which no man ought to venture who has any regard for health. But etiquette forbids me to cool my coffee in any other manner than by waiting.


Coffee cups, in houses where the secret of making good coffee is known, should be like the human heart, large and deep, and in such cases the beverage will, like true affection, cool very slowly. Hence, one who does not wish to wait till the meal is over before drinking coffee, must either cool it in his saucer or drink it hot, or wait and drink it after breakfast, and all because of the absurd notion that it is not a good manners to pour coffee into your saucer!
                                    

I rejoice in pouring forth the fragrant liquid into a capacious saucer, and, before the wondering eyes, to raise the beverage to my lips. Superstition is rebuked! Health is justified of her children!

The spirit of "Seventy-six" ought to rise with every afflicting gulp of hot coffee! The custom is wanton and cruel. It is tyranny over the inner man, carried on by force, if not by the sword. I count it, therefore a duty to humanity to set at defiance the edicts of this liquid despot— hot drink. For the welfare of mankind I refuse to burn my mouth, or scold my stomach! In behalf of mute devotees of etiquette, I raise a plea for relief! Meantime, endowed with courage, and armed with principle, I rejoice in pouring forth the fragrant liquid into a capacious saucer, and, before the wondering eyes, to raise the beverage to my lips. Superstition is rebuked! Health is justified of her children!

Scalding tea is far worse than strong tea; but to be both scalding and strong is an attack upon the human body which no man ought to venture who has any regard for health. But etiquette forbids me to cool my coffee in any other manner than by waiting.

Even more will be shocked, when I avow myself as an advocate of the rights of the KNIFE. Now, custom has it reduced to the mere function of cutting up one's food. That done, it is laid down and a fork serves every other purpose. By practice, one gains unexpected dexterity in using a fork for purposes to which it is ill adapted. The Chinese, in like manner, make awkward chopsticks rarely serviceable, by practice little short of legerdemain; but is that a good reason for the use of chop-sticks?
                                   

Selection of 19th C. fork designs

A fork, as now made, is unfitted to pierce any morsel upon its times, and yet they are sharp enough to afflict the tongue if carelessly used. They are split so as to be useless for liquids, and yet they are used as if they were spoons. The fork compels the manipulator to poke and push and pile up the food material, which tends to fall back and apart; it is made to peruse the dainty tidbits, in which often the very core of flavor resides, around the plate in a hopeless chase, and at length, a bit of bread is called in as an auxiliary, and thus, while the slim-legged fork, in one hand, is chasing a slim liquid mouthful, wad of bread in the other goes mopping and sopping around to form a corner, and between the two is at length accomplished what is called genteel feeding! 


Meanwhile, a broad knife is fitted for the very function which the fork refuses, and the wad of bread ill performs. The reasons for refusing that knife as an active feeding implement are worthy of the awkward practice. "It is liable to cut the mouth," no more than a fork is to stick into lip and tongue.


If men ate with razors, there would be some reason for avoidance. But table-knives are blunt-edged. It is even difficult to make them cut when one tries, and if they are properly used, the back of the blade will be turned into the mouth. We do not object to the fork; but we demand a restoration of the knife from banishment. We do not desire to enforce its use, but such a liberation as shall leave one free to use the knife for conveying food to the mouth when that is most convenient, and the fork, when that is preferred. Equal rights we demand for black and white, for home-born or emigrant, for rich and poor, for men and women, and for forks and knives. 
—H.W. Beecher in The Elevator Weekly Journal ~ "Equality Before the Law"

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