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

More Tales of “Knife Dining”

A hand-made, 19th century, pea knife.

Why He Used a Knife 
Blobbs—See that fellow over there eating with his knife? Slobbs —Yes; he probably wants to sharpen his appetite.—Philadelphia Inquirer, 1908 

Teaching a Bride?
Illinois congressman, Frank T. O’Hair, has a sense of humor. Also, O’Hair got married a few years ago. On the wedding trip, O’Hair frequently mortified his bride by eating with his knife and pointing out objects of interest with his fork. Not until the wedding journey was over, did his bride receive positive assurance that O’Hair really knew better. He had been eating with his knife because he thought it was a good joke on his wife. — Los Angeles Herald, 1915

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

Edwardian Brits’ Etiquette Supremacy?

With the Continental eater, the knife enters into conversation. It is retained in the gesticulating hand, it is raised imploringly to the celling, and — heaven!— it is brought into strange circles of argument. It is used to point the conclusion at the very breast of the fellow diner. When you see a man waving his knife at table, you may be sure he is an alien. “We wear no swords here,” as Sir Lucius O'Trigger says, nor do we argue with knives at table. – London Chronicle, 1907

Good Table Manners are the Art in Which the English Claim to Be Supreme

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They Sneer at Other Nations Germany, France and America, Say the Britons, Cannot Compare With Them in Good Form at Meals — Use of the Knife, Fork, Spoon and Napkin

Let it be admitted that our army is a failure, has never won a victory and never will; admitted that our navy would have difficulty in sweeping six combined great powers off the sea; admitted that we cannot act up to the French standard or trade up to the German or hustle up to the American or cheat up to the Greek. But we cherish our little pride and prejudice. The Englishman regards himself and is generally regarded as the best dressed man in the world. He also plumes himself on having the best table manners. To the Frenchman may be conceded the supremacy in the preparation of food, while the production of it owing to the decay of our agriculture, may be left to such outlying places as Siberia and Chicago.

But when it comes to the eating of food the Englishman asserts his supremacy, for if the highest art be to conceal art the highest etiquette of eating should be the triumphant pretense that one is not eating at all. And here the Englishman wins. He can eat his way through a seven course meal quite unobtrusively. It was not always so.

Lord Chesterfield, as I have been reminded by Mr. Philip Wellby's edition of the “Advice to His Son,” sketches the awkward man who “holds his knife, fork and spoon differently from other people, eats with his knife to the great danger of his mouth, picks his teeth with his fork and puts his spoon, which has been in his throat twenty times, into the dishes again. If he is to carve, he never hits the joint, but in his vain efforts to cut through the bone scatters the sauce in everybody's face. He generally daubs himself with soup and grease, though his napkin is commonly stuck through a buttonhole.”

That napkin is a test of table manners, and the nice conduct of the napkin caught the attention recently of the German Emperor, who saw one of his guests tucking the napkin under a chin. “Do you want to be shaved?” was the Imperial question. England's supremacy— in the matter of soup— lies in the spoon. An Englishman is taught to take soup from the side of the spoon. And he is the only man on earth who emerges from soup with the white shirt front of a blameless dinner and without the aid of a tucked napkin. He lays the napkin across his knees and uses it when necessary without ostentation.

That discreet conduct of the knife is the Englishman's pride and prejudice at table. There is no nation which (in its upper middle classes) reaches the English standard of the nice conduct of the knife, though we are assured that in the highest circles— among ameers, shahs, sultans, dukes and millionaires—there is a beautiful uniformity of deportment. Our insular instinct is to make the knife as inconspicuous as possible, for there is some suggestion of brutality in the slicing of bits of corpses that are doomed to keep our rile bodies alive.

No such feeling restrains the German eater, and the French diner is scarcely less sensitive. The German who feeds in the average restaurant will shovel his food into his mouth with the blade of his knife and when in a difficulty, will cram it down with the handle, nor has he the least scruple about depositing the rejected residue upon the floor. Moreover, with the Continental eater, the knife enters into conversation. It is retained in the gesticulating hand, it is raised imploringly to the celling, and — heaven!— it is brought into strange circles of argument. It is used to point the conclusion at the very breast of the fellow diner.

When you see a man waving his knife at table, you may be sure he is an alien. “We wear no swords here,” as Sir Lucius O'Trigger says, nor do we argue with knives at table.

The English knife, with all its blood thirsty suggestions, is reduced to the lowest and least obtrusive office. It is not even dug into the salt cellar, for England has reached the delicacy of salt spoons, and only in a Soho restaurant will she give you the real savor of the continent by providing salt cellars without spoons. You shove your knife into the salt and dream of Paris, Bohemia, the gypsy life in which “you dip your fingers in the pot.”

England has suppressed the knife at table. The Englishman does not use it for argument or menace or persuasion or even for the taking of salt. His table manners enjoin that the knife shall never be raised. The properly conducted knife at table never reaches forty-five degrees above the horizontal.

Unfortunately the American goes a little too far in the desire to avoid the obtrusive use of the knife and takes refuge In obtrusive concealment. Many Americans will slice their meat with the knife, lay the knife by the sitle of the plate and put the pieces into the mouth with the fork held in the right hand. Now, this is injustice to the knife, which has its modest function.— London Chronicle, 1907

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