Dining etiquette

“ A dinner interlarded with a row of extra entrées, Roman punch, and hot dessert is unknown except at a public dinner, or in the dining-room of a parvenu. About thirty-five years ago such dinners are said to have been in fashion!
The Balanced Menu
One should always try to choose well-balanced dishes; an especially rich dish balanced by a simple one. Timbale with a very rich sauce of cream and pâté de foie gras might perhaps be followed by French chops, broiled chicken or some other light, plain meat. ”

“ Nothing is more vulgar, than clumsy, awkward movements at the table, and it is certainly a sign of ill-breeding deliberately to fail to act in accordance with the rules of table etiquette. The rules of dinner etiquette should be studied carefully and just as carefully followed, if one wishes to be—and everyone does—a lady or a gentleman.
Perhaps the most important thing is one's bearing at table. Very often you see a seemingly cultured gentleman in a hotel dining-room or restaurant playing with the table silver or absent-mindedly clinking glasses together. ”

“ Tidiness of personal appearance is never at a higher premium than at the dining table. Soiled hands, negligee dress, shirt sleeves, and disheveled hair are disgusting there.
It is quite proper to take the last helping of any dish which may be passed you. To refrain looks as if you doubted the supply.
Bread is not cut, but broken into fairly small pieces. One should never nibble from a large piece.
It is permissible to eat crackers, olives, celery, radishes, salted nuts, crystallized fruits, corn on the cob, bonbons, and most raw fruits from the fingers. ”

“ If, however, friends happen in, and are asked informally to stay to a meal at a hotel, they may order themselves what they want from the menu, and, if necessary, the host or hostess of the occasion may pay the bill before leaving the dining-room, but the bill should not be paid until the guests have departed.
In giving one’s order for dinner at the hotel, oysters come first, then soup, fish, a roast or a bird, ices, whatever dessert may be desired, and coffee. Very often a woman is well served, when she is alone, by allowing the waiter to arrange a dinner for her. ”

“ According to the latest dinner etiquette in France, coffee is served for both the men and women at the dinner table. But when the dinner is very large and fashionable, it is still customary for the women to retire to the drawing-room, where the hostess presides over the coffee-urn. When men and women leave the dining-room together, they resume the same order as they observed when they entered it. ”

“ Nothing so delays the service of a dinner as dishes that must immediately be followed by necessary accessories. If there is no one to help the butler or waitress, no dish must be included on the menu—unless you are only one or two at table, or unless your guests are neither critical nor "modern"—that is not complete in itself. ”

“ It requires judgment to take the right line. We need not attempt, in our everyday dinner, to realize Disraeli's ideal of dining: "eating ortolans to the sound of soft music." But we may try to make our dinner an enjoyment as well as a refreshment; and although our set banquets may be rare, taste and attention will impart to every meal something of the character of a feast. ”

“ To abstain from taking the last piece on the dish, or the last glass of wine in the decanter, only because it is the last, is highly ill-bred. It implies a fear on your part that the vacancy cannot be supplied, and almost conveys an affront to your host.
To those ladies who have houses and servants at command, we have one or two remarks to offer. Every housekeeper should be acquainted with the routine of a dinner and the etiquette of a dinner-table. No lady should be utterly dependent on the taste and judgment of her cook. ”

“ THE ETIQUETTE OF DINNERS AND BALLS FORMAL DINNERS IN AMERICA
Eating is an extremely old custom and has been practiced by the better classes of society almost without interruption from earliest times. And “society,” like the potentate of the parable whose touch transformed every object into gold, has embellished and adorned the all-too-common habit of eating, until there has been evolved throughout the ages that most charming and exquisite product of human culture—the formal dinner party. ”

“ Good cook books are full of suggestions for delectable menus and for the order of service. The butler or maid takes complete charge and it is better to have a less elaborate dinner than to have so many courses that he or she cannot manage without haste, noise, or confusion. ”

“ If one is in the habit, as one should be, of insisting that the home dinner be served with proper formality, the extra duties involved in the service of a larger number of people and of a greater range of dishes need not be viewed with terror. ”

“ No lady should drink wine at dinner. Even if her head is strong enough to bear it, she will find her cheeks, soon after the indulgence, flushed, hot, and uncomfortable; and if the room is warm, and the dinner a long one, she will probably pay the penalty of her folly, by having a headache all the evening.
If offered any dish of which you do not wish to partake, decline it, but do not assign any reason. To object to the dish itself is an insult to your entertainers, and if you assert any reason for your own dislike it is ill-bred. ”

“ He cuts up his salad, and makes the knife a good second to a fork while eating fish. Loyal to the memories of early life, he never gets over the habit of speaking of dinner as “supper,” and observes in conversation at a fashionable reception, “As I was eating my dinner at noon to-day.” In like absent-mindedness, he tucks his napkin into his collar to protect the expanse of shirt-front exposed by the low-cut waistcoat of his dress suit. He says “sir,” to his equals, and addresses facetious remarks to the butler, or draws the waitress into conversation while meals are going on. ”

“ You must disguise your hatred of red ants and scrambled food, if everyone else is bent on a picnic. You must pretend that six is a perfect dinner hour though you never dine before eight, or, on the contrary, you must wait until eight-thirty or nine with stoical fortitude, though your dinner hour is six and by seven your chest seems securely pinned to your spine. ”

“ It is already decided for him, by the laws of etiquette. For the guest at the formal dinner must accord every respect and honor to his host and hostess—not in the servile manner of the coolie towards the mandarin, of course—but in the captivating and charming manner that bespeaks the fine lady and gentleman.
COMMENTS ON FOOD
Men and women of cultivation rarely make comments on food except to praise. It is better to accept a little of each course on one's place and eat a bit of it although one does not particularly care for it, than to refuse it entirely. ”

“ Given well-prepared food, whether simple or elaborate, proper service, a room not too warm and a current of fresh air that does not blow on any one, guests sympathetically chosen, the dinner can not fail to be a success. A young married belle of a western city who was visiting in a smart New York set was asked at her first dinner what people in the West did for after-dinner entertainment. ”

“ On the other hand, before a formal dinner, it is the duty of the hostess to be dressed and in her drawing-room fifteen, or ten minutes at least, before the hour set for dinner. For a very informal dinner it is not important to be ready ahead of time, but even then a late hostess is an inconsiderate one.
Etiquette Of Gloves And Napkin
Ladies always wear gloves to formal dinners and take them off at table. Entirely off. It is hideous to leave them on the arm, merely turning back the hands. ”

“ At a formal dinner one is not served a second time to any dish, but at an informal dinner, what are called “second helps,” are quite permissible and convey a compliment to the hostess. When a plate is sent back to the carver for a fresh supply of meat, the knife and fork should be laid side by side upon it, not held in the hand, as some persons insist. And when one has finished eating, the knife and fork are laid in the same manner upon the plate, the tines of the fork up. ”

“ The American bachelor takes usually a very light first meal. It consists of tea, coffee, or cocoa, toast, eggs, oatmeal, and fruit. There are yet a few men who go in for the old-fashioned hearty breakfast with beefsteak, buckwheat cakes, and trimmings, but in cities the lighter meal is preferable. All this is, of course, more a matter of environment and hygiene than etiquette. I have compiled a list of certain viands, which society does require should be eaten at a special meal and in only one manner. ”

“ Possessing plenty of pretty napery, silver, and china, having tolerably good cooks and well-trained waitresses, they feel themselves fairly equipped for giving small dinners, especially when they may order some of the most difficult dainties from outside. They need not be appalled by the list of what are to the majority of them unattainable adjuncts, that are declared by writers on the complete art of dining to be indispensable to a correct dinner. ”

“ The men, of course, must allow the fairer sex to pass before them through the drawing-room door and into the dining room. Luncheon menus consist of oysters, clams, or grape fruit with crushed ice and saturated with maraschino for the first course. This is followed by bouillon, an entrée, a roast or chops with peas, or broiled chicken, salad with birds, ices and fruits, coffee and liqueurs. Sherry and claret are the wines, and sometimes champagne is served. ”

“ To this aphorism we may be permitted to add that a chasse of cognac or curaçoa at the close of the dinner is like the epilogue at the end of a comedy.
Never reprove or give directions to your servants before guests. If a dish is not placed precisely where you would have wished it to stand, or the order of a course is reversed, let the error pass unobserved by yourself, and you may depend that it will be unnoticed by others.
If you are a mother, you will be wise never to let your children make their appearance at dessert when you entertain friends at dinner. ”

“ It is not necessary to wait until all are served before beginning to eat at a dinner, but wait until the hostess has commenced to eat.
Butter is not served at a formal dinner, and bread is laid in the napkin beside the plate.
There should be no urging of guests to eat. It is assumed that a guest is not afraid to eat as much as he wants. ”

“ Typical dinner-party dishes are invariably the temptation no less than the downfall of ambitious ignorance. Never let an inexperienced cook attempt a new dish for company, no matter how attractive her description of it may sound. ”

“ Never eat every morsel that is upon your plate; and surely no lady will ever scrape her plate, or pass the bread round it, as if to save the servants the trouble of washing it.
Take such small mouthfulls that you can always be ready for conversation, but avoid playing with your food, or partaking of it with an affectation of delicate appetite. Your hostess may suppose you despise her fare, if you appear so very choice, or eat too sparingly. If your state of health deprives you of appetite, it is bad enough for you to decline the invitation to dine out. ”

“ Rings around food are nearly always to be eaten; platforms under food seldom, if ever, are. Anything that looks like pastry is to be eaten; and anything divided into separate units should be taken on your plate complete. You should not try to cut a section from anything that has already been divided into portions in the kitchen. Aspics and desserts are, it must be said, occasionally Chinese puzzles, but if you do help yourself to part of the decoration, no great harm is done.
Dishes are never passed from hand to hand at a dinner, not even at the smallest and most informal one. ”

“ On the first day of my dining at the table d'hôte, one of those gentlemen told me, when we sat down to dinner, that most of the persons at table were men of business, who were in the habit of eating much quicker than he knew I was accustomed to, and requested that that might not in the slightest interfere with my habits, but that I should entirely suit my own comfort and convenience. ”

“ No one need go hungry from any well-planned dinner, even though no extra preparation has been made for the non-meat-eating guest; but if my hostess knows in advance that I do not eat meat, and wishes to have prepared an especial dish, I give her the benefit of the doubt, and believe that she is as pleased to do it as I would be in her place. ”

“ If a hot luncheon is served, it is not etiquette to put the vegetables on the table as at dinner; they should be handed by the waiter. The luncheon-table is already full of the articles for dessert, and there is no place for the vegetables. The hot entres or cold entres are placed before the master or mistress, and each guest is asked what he prefers. ”

“ A week later, she sent out invitations to all her friends requesting their presence at another formal dinner to be held in honor of the visiting lecturer. This time it was a vegetarian dinner. Suffice to say that it was a huge success.
Such is the hospitality of our American hostesses that they will concede to every whim and desire of their guests. They must be pleased at all costs. The dinner is not a success unless each guest leaves a little happier than when he came—and incidentally a little better pleased with the person who happens to be giving the dinner. ”