Luncheon Menu Etiquette

Once fruit and fruit cocktail could be purchased in cans, fruit cocktail was a popular starter at meals and could be served regardless of the season. Normally served in a small soup-type cup, berry bowl, or a champagne saucer, this mid-century modern place setting features grille-sized, silver plated flatware and Desert Rose plates, with the fruit cocktail served in a fashionably tall martini glass. – Originally made for decades by Franciscan Pottery, then sold to Josiah Wedgwood & Sons,Ltd., the wildly popular “Desert Rose” dinnerware line was first introduced in 1941. It was created in the style of Mexican folk pottery, which was very typical of Southern California décor of the early 20th C.. Inspired by the pink, rosa rugosa flower, “Desert Rose” remains a beloved china pattern today, though production in China stopped in 2004. Let the buyer beware! The earlier made pieces have a high lead content and need to be handled, used and even washed with great care. 

Filed Under “Standard Rules of Etiquette”

Question: What is an appropriate menu for a luncheon?

Answer: At a formal luncheon never more than five courses are served and the smartest of hostesses usually content themselves with serving four in contrast to the previous generation when luncheons were almost as long as dinner.

For a five course luncheon some such menu as the following 18 served: Fruit, or soup in cups, eggs, meat and vegetables, salad, dessert.

For a four course luncheon, fruit, or soup may be served, and the eggs omitted, or sometimes, the dessert. – Imperial Valley Press, 1931

 

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

Etiquette of Serving Water

A mid-20th century place setting, with plates and flatware from the 1940’s. The plates are in the highly popular, 1941 “Desert Rose” pattern by Franciscan, and the grille-sized flatware by Wm. Rogers, is in the 1940, “Treasure” pattern.
Grille-sized flatware was designed with longer handles for the knives, dinner forks and salad forks. It enjoyed brief popularity and was also called “Vogue” or “Viande” flatware. Designers felt that the longer handles made the flatware easier to use.
The “water glass”, or “water goblet”, is properly placed above the dinner knife. Water specific glasses weren’t made for the dining table until 1851, when the Corning Glass company catalog first offered a “water glass” in their glassware line.

The customs attached to the serving of water are widely different from those of other drinks. Water is the only drink which, whether at the dining-room table or in the living room, can always be poured before it is served. As we have said in the chapter “Setting the Table,” under the most elaborate system of service, water is not poured until the guests are seated at the dining-room table. But, as a matter of widely accepted practice, the water glasses are usually filled before the guests come into the room, and refilled from a pitcher as soon as any considerable quantity has been drunk.

Water served in the living room is brought in filled tumblers on a small tray; stemmed water goblets belong only on the dining-room table. It is perfectly cor rect, of course, to leave a pitcher of water in the living room or hall, on a tray with empty glasses, but whenever a guest asks for water, except in the dining room, it may always be brought already poured in a tumbler on a small tray.— From “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette,” 1948

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