Gilded Age Corn on Cob Etiquette

Numerous corn forks, corn holders, corn “strippers” (also marketed as corn “scrapers” and corn “slitters”) were patented from the Gilded Age well into the mid-20th century. 

Corn Fork

Corn on the cob, even today, is not a normal item at a formal meal— it is too messy. Yet, some Victorian hostesses did serve corn on the cob. There were several ways of handling corn on the cob. One was to use the silver cob holders shown. These worked exactly like the plastic cob holders the fastidious use on picnics to day.

At least one 1880s etiquette book favored serving corn on the cob, noting, “A lady who gives many elegant dinners at Newport causes to be laid beside the plate of each guest two little silver-gilt spike-like arrangements. Each person then places these in either end of the corn-cob and eats his corn holding it by two silver handles.” Some etiquette writers advised people to use a knife to cut the kernels off the cob and then eat the loose kernels with a fork.

The corn fork reflects another approach. The center portion of this large fork was designed to be used in scraping the corn kernels from the cob. The fork could then be used to eat the loose kernels. As a design, it was a success, the scraper worked quite well. How ever, it was a product for which there was no real market. Few diners wanted to go to that much trouble for corn so the fork sold very poorly and today is almost impossible to find.— From “Forgotten Elegance,” 2003

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

19th C. Table Manners and Innovation

A napkin or doily used in each hand, would have been much better! – Frederick Stokes’, “Good Form: Dinners Ceremonious and Unceremonious,” 1890, contrasted the crude gnawing from end to end with the more polite grasping with a folded napkin or doily. 

In the 1880s, works such as “Social Etiquette of New York” demonstrated that the ongoing debate between traditional European manners and new American ways favored the Continent. In the late 19th century however, Americans began to become comfortable with themselves and formulate their own rules for formal table setting, serving, and eating.

The serving in eating of corn on the cob has been an enduring issue for American authorities on table manners. In “Hints on Etiquette,” 1844, Charles Day decreed that rather than gnaw at the cob, the diner should scrape the kernels into his or her plate and eat them with a fork. 

The serving in eating of corn on the cob has been an enduring issue for American authorities on table manners. In “Hints on Etiquette,” 1844, Charles Day decreed that rather than gnaw at the cob, the diner should scrape the kernels into his or her plate and eat them with a fork. Frederick Stokes’, “Good Form: Dinners Ceremonious and Unceremonious,” 1890, contrasted the crude gnawing from end to end with the more polite grasping with a folded napkin or doily. 

The ever practical Emily Post simply discounted corn on the cob as suitable food for formal dining.

Food writer and Ladies Home Journal editor Sarah Tyson Rorer, America's first dietitian, proposed more demanding method of scoring each row of kernels and pressing out the content with the teeth, leaving the hulls attached to the cob. The ever practical Emily Post simply discounted corn on the cob as suitable food for formal dining.–From Encyclopedia of Kitchen History by Mary Ellen Snodgrass

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

Etiquette and Art of Living in 1876

It is alleged that during this impressive ceremonial, M. St. Beuve spread his napkin over both his knees; he admitted to crush the shells of two boiled eggs which he had eaten; he had asked for a second service of chicken; he touched the bones of the chicken with his fingers; he said “thank you” to one of the servants; he left his knife and fork on the cloth; he peeled a pear latitudially instead of longitudinally, and, worst of all, he sniffed his wine before drinking it. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French writer (1804 - 1869). Date circa 1860’s

— Public Domain Photo

A World of  Table Manners

It was reported of Lord Byron that he said that the most ungraceful act which a woman could perform was the eating of an egg. Commenting on this, a calm Western observer said that Byron had probably never seen an American woman hanging on by the teeth to a blazing hot corn-cob. To many nice people, this will be a shocking story. But the vast majority will see no suggestion of any breach of good manners in the practice of extricating the kernels of corn from their natural place of growth in the fashion so rudely described by the Western observer. However, it is a fair illustration of our idea of table etiquette. 

It was a transatlantic visitor who, following the custom of the country in the manner of eating green corn, was deluded into asking the hotel waiter to, “Put some more beans on that stick,” as he extended to him the exhausted corn cob, to which he had been hanging on. As the refinement of manners is, after all, purely relative. It may be edifying to know what would be thought of our table manners by a very imminent French critic. 

An Arab Sheik, who has more family antiquity at his back than the most ancient of Parisian nobility, would think it is the height of rudeness for an entertainer to omit to proffer to his guest, between thumb and finger, a choice bit stripped from the roasted sheep before them. He would be justly offended if the guest refused the offered token of hospitality. But the eminent French critic who has just fallen foul of M. St. Beuve for his ill-breeding, would be sure to enrage and disgust the high-bred Arabian. Nevertheless, the Frenchman talks as if he were giving laws to a world. 

For example, M. St. Beuve has declared that a man of genius cannot possess bad manners — a statement which is as dangerous as it is dogmatic. Whereupon the editor of a Paris publication, the title of which may be freely translated as “The Almanac of the Art of Living,” convicts St. Beuve of no less than eight offenses at table. These offenses, it should be said, were noted by the Master of Ceremonies of the household of the late-Emperor Napoleon. It adds to their heinousness that they were committed at the Imperial table, where, in his double capacity of Senator and man of letters, the author of “Causeries du Lundi’ was wont to break his fast. 

It is alleged that during this impressive ceremonial, M. St. Beuve spread his napkin over both his knees; he admitted to crush the shells of two boiled eggs which he had eaten; he had asked for a second service of chicken; he touched the bones of the chicken with his fingers; he said “thank you” to one of the servants; he left his knife and fork on the cloth; he peeled a pear latitudially instead of longitudinally, and, worst of all, he sniffed his wine before drinking it. If the hapless Senator had said that he would have “some more wine” instead of “some wine,” or had drank his coffee with a spoon in his cup, the deep damnation of his offenses could not have been more fully established. Let the profligate American who seeks to justify his blazing hot corn-cob read the explanation and rebuke of the editor of the “Almanac de Savior-Vivre” and despair.

This imminent authority declares that it is necessary that the napkin should be nicely adjusted. It is horrible to spread it over the knees or to open it all together. It should be partly unfolded, and posed “negligently upon the knee.” Could this critic behold the capacious breast of an English Milord or American Alderman, whitened by the snowy fall of his napkin, his consternation would be absolute. The other crimes of which M. St. Beuve was convicted are duly specified, so that the anxious reader may see how much he must himself avoid.

To peel a pear circumferentially, if we may use that phrase, is so manifestly bad form, that we take it for granted that even people who seize their corn by the ear will be warned. The editor from whose criticism we have quoted finds it necessary to tell the French people how to behave at table; which ought to be a consolation to the Centennial visitors at New-York hotels, when they do not know whether they should drink or wash the spoons in the water which they find in their finger glasses. 

The French (and therefore the world), are told that to eat sparingly when dining out is a reflection on the quality of the feast. To dine abundantly is to confess that one has a lean larder of his own. The happy medium is commended to the anxious diner-out. If one is afflicted with a large appetite, he may take off its edge at home. If he has no hunger, he may say that he is “indisposed.” These are only a few of the multifarious rules which are laid down for students in the art of living well. How much occasion there is for the dissemination of such knowledge in our own unhappy country, let those who affect the blazing hot corn-cob consider. — The New York Times, 1876

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

Domestic Notes on Table Etiquette

 An antique, King’s pattern, corn stripper or kernel scraper. Victorians loved green corn, and by the late 1800’s and early 1900’s had produced numerous patented items, like the one above, for making the eating of green corn from the cob a more graceful process.

A writer in Harper's Bazaar takes up her pen to put us all to rights on our behavior at the table. We give a part of her lecture as follows: A cream-cake, and anything of similar nature, should be eaten with knife and fork, never bitten. Asparagus may be taken from the finger and thumb. Peas and beans, we all know, require the fork only. Potatoes, if mashed, should be mashed with the fork. Green corn should be eaten from the cob, but it must be held with a single hand. Celery, cresses, radishes, and all that sort of thing, are, of course, to be eaten from the fingers; the salt should be laid upon one's plate, not upon the cloth. 

Fish is to be eaten with the fork, without the assistance of the knife; a bit of bread in the left hand sometimes helps one to master a refractory morsel. Berries, of course, are to be eaten with a spoon. It is not proper to drink with a spoon in the cup; nor should one, by the way, ever quite drain the cup or glass. Spoons are sometimes used with puddings, but forks are the better style. A spoon should never be turned over in the mouth. 

Ladies have frequently an affected way of holding the knife half way down its length, as if it were too big for their little hands, but this is as awkward a way as it is weak. The knife should be grasped freely by the handle only, the forefinger being the only one to touch the blade, and that only along the back of the blade at its root, and no further down. In sending one's plate to be helped a second time, one should retain one's knife and fork, for the convenience of waiter and carver. At the conclusion of a course, where they have been used, knife and fork should be laid side by side on the plate, never crossed; the old custom of crossing them was in obedience to an ancient religious formula. 

The servant should offer everything at the left of the guest, that the guest may be at liberty to use the right hand. If one has been given a napkin-ring, it is necessary to fold one's napkin and use the ring; otherwise the napkin should be left unfolded. One's teeth are not to be picked at the table; but if it is impossible to hinder it, it should be done behind the napkin. One may pick a bone at the table, but, as with corn, only one hand is allowed to touch it; yet one can usually get enough from it with knife and fork, which is certainly the more elegant way of doing; to take her teeth to it gives a lady the look of caring a little too much for the pleasures of the table; one is, however, on no account to suck one's fingers after it. 

Wherever there is any doubt as to the beat way to do a thing, it is wise to follow that which is the most rational, and that will almost invariably be found to be the proper etiquette. There is a reason for everything in polite usage; thus the reason why one does not blow a thing to cool it, is not only that it is an inelegant and vulgar action intrinsically, but because it may be offensive to others– cannot help being so indeed; and it, moreover, implies haste, which, whether resulting from greediness or from a desire to get away, is equally rude and objectionable. Everything else may be as easily traced to its origin in the fit and becoming. 

If to conclude, one seats one’s self properly at the table, and takes reason into account, one will do tolerably well. One must not pull one's chair too closely to the table, for the natural result of that is the inability to use one's knife and fork without inconveniencing one's neighbors; the elbows are to be held well in and close to one's side, which cannot be done if the chair is too near the board. One must not lie or lean along the table, nor rest one's arms upon it. – Pacific Rural Press, 1879

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

American Dining Etiquette History

Manners for Colonists and Early Travelers

Depiction of Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony 

At Plymouth Colony standards of deportment were established from readings of the poet Richard Braithwait's The English Gentleman and Description of a Good Wife, (1619). From the beginning, American society struggled with questions of identity, debating whether to create a uniquely American code of etiquette or merely to perpetuate the customs of the mother country. Eleazar Moody's School of Good Manners, (1715) did little to differentiate New Englander's manners from those of their cousins in Britain.

In 1883, People's Publishing Company compiled Australian Etiquette or the Rules and Usages of the Best Society in the Australian Colonies, a standard home guidebook concerning dinner parties, table conversation, and requirements a fine dining. The book served a self-conscious populous generally ridiculed by the supercilious English for its convict and laboring-class backgrounds. As Victorian manners reach the island nation, those who were moving up from billy tea to silverware and china had reason to study manners in private lest they humiliate themselves in public.

Mandan Feast ~ “The simple feast which was spread before us consisted of three dishes only, two of which were served in wooden bowls, and the third in an earthen vessel of their own manufacture, somewhat in shape of a bread-tray in our own country. This last contained a quantity of pem-I-can and marrow fat; and one of the former held a fine brace of buffalo ribs, delightfully roasted; and the other was filled with a kind of paste or pudding, made of the flour of the "pomme hlanche", as the French call it, a delicious turnip of the prairie, finely flavored with the buffalo berries, which are collected in great quantities in this country, and used with divers dishes in cooking, as we in civilized countries use dried currants, which they very much resemble.” –from Catlin's Letters and Notes 

Travelers and explorers sometimes encountered customs that, although different from their own, prompted admiration. While living alone among the Mandan, the US artist George Catlin, known for his depictions of Plains Indian life, remarked on the style of dining that allowed sitting cross-legged or reclining with the feet drawn close under the body. He noted that the Indian women gracefully served the diners and reseated themselves in a movement that allowed them modesty and poise at the same time that it left their hands free for lifting and maneuvering dishes.

A Canadian Inuit 

More common for those traveling or living in unfamiliar climes were manners that struck the visitors as unsanitary-- or worse. Sir William Edward Parry, Arctic expeditioner to the Canadian north from 1819-1822, saw Eskimo etiquette from the point of view of a polite Englishman from the Regency Period. He describes how, when serving of food from the "ootkooseek" (cook pot) during a meal, the woman of the house lifted a lump of cooked meat with her fingers and handed it to the man of the house, who began the repast. After clenching the mass between his teeth, he sliced of a portion and passed both knife and remaining meat to the next diner.

Another traveler, George French Angas, author of A Ramble Through Malta and Sicily in the Autumn of 1841, recoiled from the energetic eating style of villagers in Scaletta, Sicily. Upon arrival at a family cottage, he received a large dish of macaroni, which he thought was his personal serving: "To my surprise and astonishment, the whole family stood round me and began to demolish it with wooden forks, cramming in as much as possible into their mouths as fast as possible, then dexterously pushing in the depending filaments with their fingers. This is the true Sicilian mode of eating macaroni, though certainly not the most polite." When the hostess served him an individual trencher, he noted that she sprinkled some salt on top of the portion with her fingers, another example of plebeian manners.

Communal American family dining 

The communal dining style common in farm families of North America dictated an etiquette suited to time and place. The absence of serving pieces required some restructuring of formal rules of table service. Aunt Betsy's Rule, and How It Worked, 1863, issued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School, explained the use of personal knife and fork for removing meat, potatoes, vegetables, and pudding from a single shared dish. The text added, in the same way, a piece of bread or better was cut, and the tip of the knife dipped in the salt. The pitcher of water was passed around the table, and all drank from it.

The Shakers, who lived and worked in communes in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio, observed a strict separation of the sexes in the commune refectory. Rules for the clan required that all wait until the elder begin eating. Diners cut their meat into square and equal parts and took some of all foods on their plates. They clean their plates and "shakered" them by laying knife fork and bones to one side before scraping up crumbs. The rules of the table mandated covering the nose and mouth with a handkerchief when sneezing or coughing, using a clean knife to cut butter, and swallowing chewed food and using a napkin before speaking or drinking.

In the 1880s, works such as social etiquette of New York demonstrated that the ongoing debate between traditional European manners and new American ways favored the Continent. In the late 19th century however, Americans began to become comfortable with themselves and formulate their own rules for formal table setting, serving, and eating.

Mid-19th to Early 20th Century items designed for eating Victorian green corn 

The serving in eating of corn on the cob has been an enduring issue for American authorities on table manners. In Hints on Etiquette, 1844, Charles Day decreed that rather than gnaw at the cob, the diner should scrape the kernels into his or her plate and eat them with a fork. Frederick Stokes, Good Form: Dinners Ceremonious and Unceremonious, 1890, contrasted the crude gnawing from end to end with the more polite grasping with a folded napkin or doily. Food writer and Ladies Home Journal editor Sarah Tyson Rorer, America's first dietitian, proposed more demanding method of scoring each row of kernels and pressing out the content with the teeth, leaving the hulls attached to the cob. The ever practical Emily Post simply discounted corn on the cob as suitable food for formal dining.

Cross-Cultural Etiquette Quandaries into the Twentieth Century 

Making blue tortillas 

Meetings between cultures often produced table quandaries. On first contact with Southwestern cuisine, Susan Shelby Magoffin, the prim well bred daughter of Governor Isaac Shelby and author of Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, 1846, was dubious of a blue tortilla wrapped in a napkin. Knowing better than to insult her hosts, she ate the odd colored dish without protest but wrote of the experience, “Oh, how my heart second, to say nothing of my stomach.” it did not take long for her to discover that refinements such as eating utensils could easily be dispensed with: As Southwestern Native said done for centuries she learn to fold a tortilla and use it as a food scoop.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, as the global economy pressed more Western business people into contact with the cultures of Japan, West Africa, India, and the Middle East, a demand rose for guides to unfamiliar dining experiences. American and English visitors ponder the proper way to remove their shoes before entering a Japanese or Turkish home and how to signal the chopsticks were unfamiliar and awkward. One of the most surprising taboos of the Sahara, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East, the prohibition against the use of the left hand for eating, seemed strange to people accustom to dining with both hands. Once foreigners learned that people in these societies traditionally used the right hand for dining and left hand to perform toilet hygiene, the custom became understandable. To assist guests with these one-handed operations, Bangladeshi hostesses is typically distributed basins for before-and after-dinner hand washing and remained on hand to serve plates rather than to join diners. In Botswana, before the table blessing, the business of the ritual hand washing fell to young girls, who filled a basin from an urn and extended a towel to diners.

In compliance with Islamic law, dutiful Muslims have traditionally welcomed any strangers seeking hospitality. Food writer Claudia Roden, author of A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, 1985, explained the obligation of the Muslim cook to cater to diners' tastes. Guests customarily acknowledged the cook's effort and tasted what was offered to them, eating from the edge of a communal platter rather than serving themselves from the middle. Before ending a meal, the host circulated the communal “guerba” (beverage container) of milk or water – but not wine, which the Koran forbids. The polite diner refrained from breathing into the liquid. After the vessel made its round, participants relaxed with coffee and tobacco.

–From Encyclopedia of Kitchen History by Mary Ellen Snodgrass

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