Bad Table Etiquette Cuts Off Friendships

  

Firmly, Nancy places a large piece of bread on the table cloth, plasters it thick with butter.

They wont dine out again! 

Bob stares at Nancy’s hands in fascinated horror. Firmly she places a large piece of bread on the table cloth, plasters it thick with butter. Then she lifts the whole piece to her mouth, leaves teeth marks in its buttery surface whenever she takes a bite. Surely Nancy knows that the only correct way to eat bread is to break off and butter a small piece at a time, just enough for a mouthful. 

Careless table manners —so easy to avoid —offend others most. Are YOU ever guilty of: 

• Pouring salt for celery or radishes on table cloth instead of plate?

• Dropping olive pits into ash trays? 

• Hanging knife and fork off edge of dinner plate so they tumble onto table when plate is removed?

            –The Santa Ana Journal, Home Service, 1937

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

Bad Table Manners Hold You Back

Don’t, Dora, unless you want always to be known as a “One-Date Girl” - pile food on your fork, pat it down with your knife. Use a knife for cutting only; take food with your fork, a little at a time. 

Found Under “Home Service”

 

"Why am I always stuck with such ill-bred people?" wonder Prue, Dora and Jack. Better think less about others’ errors, you three; find out your own! Don't plunge after your falling spoon retriever-fashion, Jack, unless it's in some one's way. Wait for a fresh one. 

Don’t, Dora, unless you want always to be known as a “One-Date Girl” - pile food on your fork, pat it down with your knife. Use a knife for cutting only; take food with your fork, a little at a time. 

If you want to belong, Prue, don’t smack your salt cellar over your hostess’ well-seasoned food. Season so inconspicuously that no one thinks you’re criticizing your fare.

***Avoid telltale blunders, learn the fine points of table manners from our 32-page booklet. Etiquette of informal and formal dinners, restaurants, clubs, dining-cars. Be at ease in any circle. Send 10c for your copy of Good Table Manners to Santa Ana Journal, Home Service. Be sure to write plainly your name, address, and the name of booklet. – Santa Ana Journal, 1937

***Etiquipedia has included the initial added blurb from 1937, offering a booklet for 10 cents, simply for historical accuracy. This offer (and newspaper) is no longer available.

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

Gilded Age Etiquette for the Table

 

“Do not overload the fork. To pack meat and vegetables on the fork as though it were a beast of burden has been pointed out as a common American vulgarity, born of our hurried ways of eating at hotels and restaurants.”
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Unlike contemporary table knives, those of the 18th and 19th Centuries had dull and wide, flat blades. Usually they were steel. Many who were unfamiliar with utensils and their expected dining usage, found the knives ideal for not just cutting with, but for eating from. By the mid-1800’s, etiquette books encouraged diners to stop the practice of eating their food from their knives. As etiquette books are often ignored, small numbers of several generations continued the practice.— Image from “What Have We Here?: The Etiquette and Essentials of Lives Once Lived, from the Georgian Era through the Gilded Age and Beyond...”

Hints for the Table

All soft cheeses should be eaten with the fork.

In using the spoon, be careful not to put it too far into the mouth.

Salt cellars are now placed at each plate and it is not improper to take salt with the knife.

To make a hissing sound when eating soup shows very bad breeding.

Do not overload the fork. To pack meat and vegetables on the fork as though it were a beast of burden has been pointed out as a common American vulgarity, born of our hurried ways of eating at hotels and restaurants.

Pears and apples should be pared, cut into quarters and then picked up with the fingers. Oranges should be peeled and cut or separated, as one chooses.

Grapes should be eaten from behind the half-closed hand, the stones and skin falling into the fingers unobserved and thence to the plate. – San Diego Daily Bee, 1887

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

Dining Etiquette History Bits

“Now” is always a good time to brush up on inoffensive dining habits and how they evolved. If you know how a rule came about, you will most likely remember the rule, rather than tuning it out of your mind as being ridiculous.

Let's start with the table and how it is set. Would you set your table with forks, spoons and handguns? Probably not, unless yours is some type of “theme” event which I do not want to dwell on.

The question of handguns is out of the question for those of us who consider ourselves civilized. But this was a problem European forefathers faced when it came to knives at the table.

Before forks and spoons arrived on the scene, the only implements for eating were knives and one's fingers-a problem, because knives were the weapon du jour and someone who had consumed too much grog I might take offense to another diner’s remarks during the course of the meal. And according to old literature, many people were done away with during dinner time.

Once Europe decided to become more civil, rules for knives at the table had to be created. The blades must be rounded, Cardinal Richelieu decreed, after watching dinner guests pick at their teeth with the pointed ends of their knives.

It was also decided that knives could only be used if they were necessary for a particular fare. Soft foods had to be eaten with the hands (breads, pasta before sauces were added, etc…). Knives laid at the table were to have the blades facing the plate or the diner they were set for, as opposed to facing toward another diner in an aggressive manner.

The placement of the silver, or flatware, is what everyone seems to get confused with in modern society. We still eat with the utensils farthest from the plate first and work toward the plate as we continue the meal. And the utensils above the plate are reserved for dessert, with two exceptions: the salt spoon and butter spreader.

Salt cellars are small dishes containing salt, and hopefully a salt spoon, which is a tiny thing that looks as if it belongs in a dollhouse.

And gesticulating (waving one's knife in the air) while talking was and still is frowned upon. When eating with one's hands, one finger was kept extended and out of the trencher (the bowl the food was served in) to remain free of grease. That finger could then be used to dip into the salt without tainting it. Once it was determined your fingers could touch nothing at the table except for the bread or utensils, you could no longer use your finger for the salt.

The little things are what tend to add up to one big faux pas, so I will list in order of importance the basics of the table and settings that most people find confusing:

• Your bread plate is above your forks to the left of your plate.
• Your glasses are the ones above your knives and spoons to the right of your plate.
• The fork is the only utensil that can be at all three sides of the set ting: three on the left, one above, one on the right.
• Coffee is never served with the meal if the meal is a formal one. It is only served after the meal, away from the table.
• Nothing is to be spit into your napkin at the table. Spitting has not been allowed for at least 100 years.
• Shoving your plate away from you to let others know you are done isn't done in polite dining.
• The charger or service plate is customarily removed prior to the serving of the entree, but can remain on the table through to dessert.

From an article by Maura J. Graber in “Southern California Magazine,” 1993

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

Etiquette and Moralizing Character

Petrus Alphonsi's rules for diners explained a necessity of eating only from one's own bowl, taking small bites, wiping the mouth before drinking, and emptying the mouth before speaking. – "Alfonsi's fame rests mainly on 'thirty-three tales' composed in Latin, at the beginning of the 12th century. This work is a collection of oriental tales of 'moralizing character' or manners." – Mary Ellen Snodgrass

Storyteller and moralist Petrus Alphonsi's Disciplina Clericalis, or Training for a Gentleman, (ca 1100 CE) written in the form of a dialogue between father and son, explained the rudiments of offering guests water for washing hands. Rules for diners explained a necessity of eating only from one's own bowl, taking small bites, wiping the mouth before drinking, and emptying the mouth before speaking.

Similar guidebooks reminded the polite guest never to dredge food in the salt cellar. Correct salting required lifting grains of salt by means of a clean knife blade or extracting a pinch a time with clean fingers. An Italian guide, The Treatise on Courtesy, (ca 1200 CE), of Tomasino di Circlaria (or Thomasin von Zerklaere), rooted its advice in musings on gentility and correct behavior a table. The sensible precepts set forth in and other early European books on manners has changed little up to the present time. – Encyclopedia of Kitchen History

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