Kettle Etiquette and Discerning Palates

The Chinese are well known to possess great delicacy of taste, especially in regard to their favorite beverage, tea.

Delicacy in Taste and Hygiene

The Chinese are well known to possess great delicacy of taste, especially in regard to their favorite beverage, tea. Few would be inclined, however, to give them credit for such sensitiveness of palate as was recently described by a Chinese lecturer on tea drinking, who said that when he was a boy about eleven years old, he lived with his father, who was a little near-sighted, in a cottage in the southern part of China. One day he was cleaning out his father’s teakettle, and could not get all the tea leaves out, so he put his hand in the kettle.

About a half-hour afterward his father called for his tea, which the speaker took to him and returned to work. Shortly, the old gentlemen called him again, and asked him if he did not tell him never to put his hand in the teakettle. “Well,” said the speaker, “I did not know whether my father was peeking through the keyhole, watching me or not. So I let three weeks pass, when I knew my father was out on business, and I again put my hand in the teakettle. That evening I was called to answer the question which was asked me several weeks before. But you can rest assured from that time to this I have never put my hand in any teakettle.”  — Original in Good Housekeeping, 1892

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

Riches Give No Social Guarantee

Not everyone can be hypnotized to see what isn’t there, and there are many things that one cannot purchase. True friendship, social acceptance, and admiration from others are just a few of these things that money cannot buy and that a vulgar amount of money can actually dissuade.   

Vulgar Displays of Riches

There is a great deal said by Americans about the corruption of society by wealth. Vulgar display of riches is seen often enough, but this does not find an entrance into the best society.

Americans without sufficient cause malign their own institutions more than they know. While plutocracy is an evil felt in many directions, the fact remains that it is a thing apart from the people, receiving no honors in its own right and given distrust and dislike as its natural portion. 

The rich who stand as leaders in society are also leaders in public movements of a beneficent character. In matters relating to education, in charitable movements and in the advancement of literature and art, they are prominent. 

Riding to hounds and the possession of racing stables are not their chief pleasures. Pheasant culture, and the periodical shooting of the birds so cultivated, do not occupy their time. Their recreations are of a more intellectual sort.

Anglomania and the snobbery that it implies are to be found in certain circles in America, but they are recognized as an unhealthy growth and are received by the public with a humorous indulgence which is very far away from genuine admiration. — “America,” 1892

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

A New Table Drink from London

A “true trio” is two different shaped, porcelain cups (one for coffee and one for tea) and one matching saucer. This set is circa 1840s. True trios were sold in this manner, as a consumer would conceivably need only need one saucer, as the coffee and tea would not be drunk simultaneously. Etiquipedia has not yet found if a specific gilded age, “coffee-tea” cup was ever invented. 

Coffee-tea, a beverage made from the leaves of the coffee shrub, is a new candidate for popular favor, and would seem to have some advantages over the berry. It has not yet reached this country, save as a chance curiosity, but was recently brought under the notice of the Royal Botanic Society of London. The samples of coffee-tea, or prepared coffee leaves, were grown in the society's conservatory. 

The secretary said it had been estimated that the percentage of theine in the leaves of coffee was 1.26 as against 1.00 in the beans. As the leaves may be easily grown in many parts of the world where it is difficult to insure good crops of coffee beans, he thought it might prove a valuable agricultural product in many warm colonies. At present, he said, only some two millions of men use coffee-tea, in comparison with 110 millions who use the bean, and 500 millions who drink Chinese and Indian tea. — Good Housekeeping Magazine, 1892

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

Etiquette and the “Indelicate”

If we go farther back toward the dining table, we shall find that the disgusting habit grows even more pronounced, and that the table itself is often a witness of the indelicate proceeding. — A trio of antique toothpicks from the 18th and 19th centuries, from the book, “What Have We Here? The Etiquette and Essentials of Lives Once Lived, from the Georgian Era through the Gilded Age and Beyond...”

The Fall of the Toothpick

If there is one thing more than another which needs correction, in the ranks of what pass for cultivated people, it is the prominence of the toothpick. No sight is more common, about the dinner hour, than to see knots of men gathered in front of hotels and boarding houses, standing on street corners, riding in public conveyances or else where, with a toothpick ostentatiously protruding from the mouth, or with the said wooden splinter in diligent use as an excavator. If we go farther back toward the dining table, we shall find that the disgusting habit grows even more pronounced, and that the table itself is often a witness of the indelicate proceeding.

It is a matter of congratulation, therefore, that a better habit is asserting itself, in witness of which the following extract from a hotel journal may be quoted: “The practice of serving toothpicks, as a course, is no longer observed in polite society. Neither are they used as a sideboard decoration and a centerpiece for the table. Neither are they served along with after-dinner coffee, and it is not polite to pick the teeth at table; it is rather the act of a scavenger, even if the face and mouth are covered by a napkin, as some people. seem to think is correct. Really refined people suffer pain rather than to pick their teeth at the table. A person might as well brush the teeth at a meal, and it would be quite as agreeable a diversion. 

“The toothpick is properly an article of toilet and for the bathroom and the dressing room, and not for the dining-room. People do not clean their nails at the table, which would be far more preferable than the opening of cavernous, mouths. The time has really come when something should be said about this disgusting toothpick fad. Better go to the dentist and have the holes plugged up with gold and cement, instead of prying meat out with a toothpick. The whole thing is pandering to a low taste instead of a high one, and it is high time that it ceased to be a custom, or to be tolerated as such.”— Original in Good Housekeeping, 1892

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

Antebellum Table Manners

A historical reproduction, period 1855 place setting, created by site editor, Maura Graber and artist, Eda Bierman. The word antebellum literally means “before the war” (from the original Latin “ante” meaning “before” and “bellum” meaning “war.”) In modern vernacular, it is generally referring to the period before the 1860’s Civil War in the United States. —During the first course, each one helps himself at his pleasure to whatever he drinks; but in the second course, when the master of the house passes round choice wine, it would be uncivil to refuse it. We are not obliged, however, to accept a second glass.

Special Rules to be Observed at the Table

It is ridiculous to make a display of your napkin; to attach it with pins to your bosom, or to pass it through your button-hole; to use a fork in eating soup; to ask for meat instead of beef; for poultry instead of saying chicken or turkey; to turn up your cuffs in carving; to take bread, even when it is within your reach, instead of calling upon the servant; to cut with a knife your bread, which should be broken by the hand, and to pour your coffee into the saucer to cool.

During the first course, each one helps himself at his pleasure to whatever he drinks; but in the second course, when the master of the house passes round choice wine, it would be uncivil to refuse it. We are not obliged, however, to accept a second glass.

When at the end of the second course, the cloth is removed, the guests may assist in turning off that part of it which is before them, and contribute to the arrangement of the dessert plates which happen to be near, but without attempting to alter the disposition of them. From the time that the dessert appears on the table, the duties of the master of the house diminish, as do also his rights. — The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility of 1856

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

Etiquette of the Buttery

Hidden somewhere back of these things in those days were several bottles of what Grandmother called “special flavoring,” which she used to put into special occasion dishes of one kind or another, like plum pudding, fruit cake, and mincemeat; the bottles were not in plain sight in case a neighbor peeked into the butt'ry.

–Photo of the back cover art for The Butt’ry Book, by Tasha Tudor

From “The Buttery Book”

Cit’s people used to have pantries. The country counterpart of the pantry was called a “butt'ry.” In occasional hidden corners of New England, this country room may still be found in use, but only the most old-fashioned houses, loved and lived in by the most old-fashioned kind of people, have a “butt'ry” these days.

The butt'ry (properly spelled ‘buttery,’ of course) is a small room with a smell of good things to eat and a look of delicious plenty. It is located next to the kitchen in the cool corner of the house. Its window is shaded in summer by a crab-apple tree. We can watch a robin and her mate busily raising their family in the nest tucked between branches. 

We can reach out the window with a long-nosed watering can to give a drink to the fuchsia and begonia plants trailing their flowery stems in the dappled shade of the leaves. Through the window, we watch the lilacs and the old-fashioned roses come into bloom, and enjoy a view of the perennial border against its background of gray stone wall as its colors and patterns change from the daffodils of early spring to the last flowering chrysanthemum of the autumn.

In the winter, the bird feeder is easy to reach from the window, and who minds if we dip overmuch into the sugar bucket when whipping up a cake if we are diverted by the arrival of a cardinal or rose-breasted grosbeak on the windowsill? In the winter now the butt'ry is warm and cheerful, though in years gone by it was often bitter cold and the New England house wife who never dreamed of such a thing as an electric freezer kept her store of frozen pies and muffins and cookies handy to the kitchen on a shelf of the butt'ry.

Sheathed in warm-colored pine boards, the walls of the butt'ry are lined with hand-planed shelves, sturdy enough to bear the weight of jars, crocks, platters, and plates filled with the richness of country cooking. On the floor under the shelves are the bins of flour and the wooden bucket of are the stacks of milk pans and pails, the churns, the breadboard in place against the wall, to be pulled out often and placed on the wide shelf in front sugar. 

Here off the window, floured for rolling out cookies, pie and biscuit dough, or kneading bread, then dusted off and replaced in its niche. A big basket of apples fits into the corner; a pan of potatoes brought up from the cellar is next to the apples. Several battered lard pails and a half-dozen old Shaker made wooden blueberry boxes await July blueberry-picking time.

Here too is kept the crock of tutti-frutti, which is as much a part of the butt'ry equipment as anything else you can see there. It holds two gallons of rich fruit sauce for ladling generously onto a plate of vanilla ice cream or a slice of pound or sponge cake, and I've known many a time when a finger was surreptitiously dipped in and popped into an appreciative mouth for elegant tasting. The jar is always empty by the time the first fresh straw berries are brought in from the garden, washed clean then, and a pint of the very best brandy poured in. Two cups of firm red-ripe strawberries are sliced in half and added to the brandy, then two cups of sugar on top. This is stirred gently every day with a long-handled wooden spoon until the sugar is dissolved. 

Next fresh pineapple is peeled, sliced, and cut into small wedges. Cherries, black and sweet red, are pitted and stirred in. Added, in season, with equal amounts of sugar are two cups each of raspberries, left whole; then blackberries; apricots, quartered; peaches cut in generous cubes after skins have been removed. This is all stirred carefully after each addition until sugar has melted in. Several thicknesses of cheesecloth laid across the mouth of the jar, with the lid on top, keep out fruit flies, is kept at least a month before tasting, to “marry” the fruit flavors. Grapes are too thick skinned, pears and apples too bland to use. Blueberries, perhaps a handful, are sometimes added just for texture change, but they are apt to become tough-skinned and lose their individual flavor.

High on the top shelf of the butt'ry are the special-occasion dishes that are not used every day. The Canton-china punch bowl is carefully wrapped in tissue. The Turk's head mold for holiday cake-baking is there, and the turkey platter. Grandmother gave Grandfather that silver eggnog bowl on their silver wedding anniversary for serving his own special eggnog. This was the only thing he was ever known to step into the butt'ry to do, but this he did with a flourish and a disregard for the cost of rich ingredients that befitted the gracious Victorian gentleman. 

Hidden somewhere back of these things in those days were several bottles of what Grandmother called “special flavoring,” which she used to put into special occasion dishes of one kind or another, like plum pudding, fruit cake, and mincemeat; the bottles were not in plain sight in case a neighbor peeked into the butt'ry.

The spice chest doesn't begin to hold all the aromatic herbs and spices needed for good New England cooking, so they spill across the shelf in an array of highly decorative tins and jars and small wooden boxes labeled Turmeric and Cardamom and Mace and Saffron and Marjoram and many other romantic, pungent smelling, spicy-sounding names.

A pepper grinder and a tin nutmeg grater sit beside the lovely wooden lemon squeezer. The coffee mill is a two-wheeled generous one. In earlier days, green coffee beans were roasted in the oven just the proper amount, then fresh-ground for each pot. Now we buy already roasted beans mixed to order, and for special occasions there is a tin of S.S. Pierce's mocha java always on hand.

Cooky molds of many shapes and sizes, mixing spoons and ladles with long handles, brass scoops, a rolling pin, and a copper cream skimmer hang here too. Worn and scratched from years of use are the butter paddles and chopping bowls of wood, a small cutting board with a sharp, sharp knife. The silvery sheen of pewter plates and measures contrasts with the warm yellow of the mixing crocks and cream pans.

From The Butt’ry Shelf Cookbook, by Mary Mason Campbell, 1968 

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

Holiday Etiquette and Diversity at Work

For people who don’t celebrate Christmas, the holiday season can be difficult, Stanek said. “Often the only chance for people to socialize with their co-workers is at a Christmas party it’s hard when this is something you don’t celebrate,” she said. “You have to either celebrate Christmas or not celebrate at all, and there are no alternatives.” Roth stressed that people should discuss how they want to celebrate before the holiday season.

Program discussed celebrating the holidays in the workplace

The holiday season is a joyous time of year, but in areas where people of different religious backgrounds share common space, it is also a season for tact. The Office for Campus Diversity and Affirmative Action presented “Sharing Holidays in the Workplace” Thursday, a program which sought to raise awareness about celebrating with respect during the holiday season. The panel of speakers talked about recognizing and celebrating holidays other than Christmas, such as Kwaanza, Yom Kippur and the Wiccan holiday Samhain. 

Wendy Stanek, who spoke about Samhain, said she hoped that providing information about different holidays would add to an appreciation for diversity during the holiday season. “We need to know that there are other holidays to celebrate in addition to Christmas,” she said. “We’re trying to add to the diversity of celebrations, not to take anything away.” Samhain, which takes place at the end of October, is a time of introspection, Stanek said. “It’s the ending of the old year and the beginning of anew year,” she said. “At this time, we think about things which have happened and people who have died.” 

Stanek added that people who attended the program learned about proper holiday etiquette. “We learned that it is not appropriate to wish people a happy Yom Kippur, because it is not necessarily a happy holiday,” she said. “Instead, wish them an easy fast.” Karen Roth, UC Davis associate director of student housing and one of the co-presenters at the program, agreed that people should acknowledge other holidays with respect. “It is important that whatever holidays are honored, they are honored in an authentic and precise way,” she said. “You need to ask people how they want you to acknowledge their celebrations.” 

For people who don’t celebrate Christmas, the holiday season can be difficult, Stanek said. “Often the only chance for people to socialize with their co-workers is at a Christmas party it’s hard when this is something you don’t celebrate,” she said. “You have to either celebrate Christmas or not celebrate at all, and there are no alternatives.” Roth stressed that people should discuss how they want to celebrate before the holiday season.

“Before decorating and making party plans, it’s good to have the group get together and talk,” she said. “During December, the Office for Campus Diversity gets a lot of complaints from people who don’t feel good about certain decorations or celebrations.” According to Stanek, having a comfortable office atmosphere during the holidays can make a difference. “During the program, we recommended that co-workers talk with each other and open lines of communication,” she said. 

Roth said being respectful during the holidays extends from the workplace to the classroom. “Students, especially those in living groups, such as dorms, fraternities, and sororities, need to remember that not everyone celebrates Christmas,” she said. “We’ve tried to spread the word by doing cross-cultural activities in the residence halls.” Celebrating holidays that are not recognized by most people can be frustrating for students, Stanek said. “Professors should try to understand if a student can’t go to class on certain days,” she said. – California Aggie News, 1995

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

New England New Year’s Traditions

Illustration from The Butt’ry Shelf Cookbook by Tasha Tudor

A New Year's Day Open House

“Rabbits” is the first word to be said on the first day every month. It's an old family custom, reputedly bringing money to anyone who doesn't forget to say it. The fact that it is sometimes hard to see that the promise comes true doesn't alter our fun in saying it. First to awaken, echoing through the house, begins the New Year with the magic word.

Nearly always a cold, cold day, sometimes quite a stormy one, this day in New England—and indeed the country over-is for family and friends of all sizes and ages. The old house is filled to bursting in spite of weather. Boots are stacked high in the front hall, the big four-poster bed in the company room is loaded with coats and caps and mittens. In the Old Kitchen, hot spiced cider is ready for passing in mugs as a good warm-up. This is a welcoming room with its huge fireplace, beehive oven, and black ened ceiling beams.

In the best parlor, the candles have been lighted and the hearth-fire, too. Hot tea and coffee steam in gleaming silver pots reflecting the candlelight. Beside the teapot are a pitcher of cream, a dish of lemon slices with clove, and one of candied mint leaves. On the coffee tray are a bowl of whipped cream and a silver nutmeg grater. Thin Staffordshire cups of green sprig pattern or pink luster, coin-silver teaspoons, and hand-hemstitched tea napkins are arranged on polished mahogany.

The Christmas Cooky Tree is loaded with the last and the best of the butt'ry holiday supply, now dwindled to these saved especially for this party. The traditional family Pound Cake is served on the best Sandwich glass cake plate. A silver bread tray is brought to table, its neat rows of oh-so-thinly sliced Rich Plum Cake fragrant and glistening with “special flavoring.” Grandfather's eggnog on the serving tables invites a toast to the New Year.

In the Old Kitchen, the children enjoy gingerbread animal cookies, and another mug of cider. Thin sandwiches disappear like magic. Have a look at the golden shining Christmas tree, and now “Happy New Year” is being called out everywhere until the last guest has gone. Candles have burned down and the last dish is washed. Back on the top shelf of the butt'ry go the Canton punch and silver eggnog bowls, and upstairs for us all, warmed by friendship and the fun of the New Year's first party.

New Year’s Day Open House Menu

Eggnog                   Hot Spiced Cider

Christmas Cookies            Christmas Candies

Pound Cake                  Rich Plum Cake

Date-Nut Bread Sandwiches 

Gingerbread Animal Cookies

Tea        Candied Mint Leaves      Coffee

From The Butt’ry Shelf Cookbook, by Mary Mason Campbell, 1968 

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