1920’s Sugar Etiquette

A Second Début Article from 2019

Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books. Now it is applied to everything—even sugar.

New Rules for Housewives in Latest Sugar  Etiquette 

Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books. Now it is applied to everything—even sugar. There are distinct rules for the use of sugar and the careful housewife is going to see that they are obeyed. ‘‘But it really is not proper” will floor all disputants who are tempted to use sugar the wrong way.

Take granulated sugar for example. It should be used for baking, cooking, sweetening and candy-making, but it certainly should not be used for iced beverages or for coffee, yet lots of women do not understand this. As a matter of fact, powdered sugar is the proper sweetening for iced beverages, and powdered sugar should also be used on fruits and cereals and for dusting pies and cookies.

There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all.

As for hot coffee and tea and cocoa and chocolate, that is where tablet sugar comes in. One really ought to make a table of sugar rules and hang it in a convenient spot on the kitchen wall. It would keep the housewife posted on what sugar to use in her cooking and also what kinds to put on the dining room table and when. 

It would be convenient to consult the rules when making an icing and learn that confectioners sugar was proper for that and for fondants, or it would be just as convenient to glance at the rules and discover that brown sugar was for baked beans, ginger bread, candied sweet potatoes, all kinds of tarts and cakes and for sprinkling on the children’s bread. There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all. – Calexico Chronicle, 1922

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

An Etiquette “Idiotorial” from 1919

“There are usually so many different kinds of knives, forks and spoons at the average dinner party that it might be a good idea to have the jeweler engrave its use on the handle… When the jewelers are marking forks they ought to move the tines closer together, so that the food won't sip through the cracks and fall on your chest and spoil your rented dress suit. With clothes the price they are, somebody ought to invent a spotless food.” ~ Above– Four forks which never became popular – An American-made, “left handed” fork and three, British-made forks. The three to the right were designed by Ellington in 1867 as “gravy forks or pea forks”. The tines are melded together all except for the ends in order to more conveniently scoop up one’s gravey, or one’s peas. Pease were a staple of British life in the 1800’s and many people in 1867 were still eating their peas from their knives.

Table Manners Not as Necessary As the Food to Practice Them On

There is a school in town which teaches table manner. This may be a good idea, but before we learn how to eat our food we ought to learn how to get it. If it wasn't for table manners, we could just have a set of knives and save ourselves the expense of a lot of silverware.

A lot of people claim that good table manners help them in getting invited out to dinner often. The bird who gets invited out is the one who doesn't cop too much of the table silver when he's visiting.

There are usually so many different kinds of knives, forks and spoons at the average dinner party that it might be a good idea to have the jeweler engrave its use on the handle.

Or it might be a good plan to make the handle longer and print on it everything that may be eaten with it. Take a spoon, for instance. It could have written on it “To be used for soup, coffee, ice cream, pudding, tea, jelly, prunes and mush.”

If you get some food which you never saw before, you could just look over the different silverware and find out which tool to eat with. If the name didn't happen to appear on any of the knives, forks or spoons, just tell your host or hostess that he doesn't care for any.

Grapefruit spoons should be equipped with a windshield or some other contrivance to keep the Juice ont of your neighbor's eye. Either this, or pass goggles to all of the diners.

When the jewelers are marking forks they ought to move the tines closer together, so that the food won't sip through the cracks and fall on your chest and spoil your rented dress suit. With clothes the price they are, somebody ought to invent a spotless food.

Can you imagine how nice it would he to have an egg which you could drop on your white shirt front without soiling it. Of course, it's hard enough to get any kind of an egg at all without going out and hunting for a non-spot.  

This table manners school ought to teach diners not to hit you in the stomach with their elbow every time they try to cut their meat. You can't tell whether they're eating or giving you a massage. 

People should stop using little squares of butter and eut them into balls so that you can roll them around the table instead of passing a heavy plate. An amateur would have to practice playing pool in order to be able to direct the balls. 

The same thing could be done with peas and olives. Instead of the maid passing the dish, she could just stand at one end of the able and roll five or six peas to each guest. After a little practice, a diner could soon get them to roll up his knife and into his mouth. This would save a lot of dishwashing. 

Still, this would confuse the diners. They wouldn't be able to tell whether they were eating or playing tennis. There’s only one suggestion we’d like to make. Tell us how to get the food and we’ll find a way to eat it. 

*On a side note: Amber is believed by the Turks to be an infallible guard against injurious effects of nicotine; hence its extensive use for mouthpieces of pipes.– From “Love, Laughter, Life: An “Idiotorial,” by humorist, John P. Medbury, 1919

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

Sugar Etiquette History in the US

 “Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books.”– After WWI, world beet sugar supplies were very low, while cane sugar production was increasing, leading to tariffs on sugar. 

New Rules for Housewife in Latest Sugar Etiquette 

Observing proprieties has become a national obsession. Everybody’s doing it. Etiquette used to be confined to paper-covered hand books. Now it is applied to everything—even sugar. There are distinct rules for the use of sugar and the careful housewife is going to see that they are obeyed. ‘‘But it really is not proper” will floor all disputants who are tempted to use sugar the wrong way.

Take granulated sugar for example. It should be used for baking, cooking, sweetening and candy-making, but it certainly should not be used for iced beverages or for coffee, yet lots of women do not understand this. As a matter of fact, powdered sugar is the proper sweetening for iced beverages, and powdered sugar should also be used on fruits and cereals and for dusting pies and cookies.

There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all.

As for hot coffee and tea and cocoa and chocolate, that is where tablet sugar comes in. One really ought to make a table of sugar rules and hang it in a convenient spot on the kitchen wall. It would keep the housewife posted on what sugar to use in her cooking and also what kinds to put on the dining room table and when.

It would be convenient to consult the rules when making an icing and learn that confectioners sugar was proper for that and for fondants, or it would be just as convenient to glance at the rules and discover that brown sugar was for baked beans, ginger bread, candied sweet potatoes, all kinds of tarts and cakes and for sprinkling on the children’s bread. There seems to be considerable common sense in sugar etiquette after all. – Calexico Chronicle, 1922

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