Etiquette

In old-fashioned times people apparently did not mind waiting tranquilly through courses and between courses, even though meat grew cold long before the last of many vegetables was passed, and they waited endlessly while a slow talker and eater finished his topic and his food. But people of to-day do not like to wait an unnecessary second. The moment fish is passed them, they expect the cucumbers or sauce, or whatever should go with the fish, to follow immediately. And when the first servant hands the meat course, they consider that they should not be expected to wait a moment for a second servant to hand the gravy or jelly or whatever goes with the meat. No service is good in this day unless swift—and, of course, soundless.

A late leader of Newport society who had a world-wide reputation for the brilliancy of her entertainments, had an equally well-known reputation for rapidly served dinners. "Twenty minutes is quite long enough to sit at table—ever!" is what she used to say, and what her household had to live up to. She had a footman to about every two guests and any one dining with her had to cling to the edge of his plate or it would be whisked away! One who looked aside or "let go" for a second found his plate gone! That was extreme; but, even so, better than a snail-paced dinner!

In America the dinner hour is not a fixture, since it varies in various sections of the country. The ordinary New York hour when "giving a dinner" is eight o'clock, half past eight in Newport. In New York, when dining and going to the opera, one is usually asked for seven-fifteen, and for seven-thirty before going to a play. Otherwise only "quiet" people dine before eight. But invitations should, of course, be issued for whatever hour is customary in the place where the dinner is given.

When the dinner guests enter the dining-room, it is customary for the butler to hold out the chair of the mistress of the house. This always seems a discourtesy to the guests. And an occasional hostess insists on having the chair of the guest of honor held by the butler instead of her own. If there are footmen enough, the chair of each lady is held for her; otherwise the gentleman who takes her in to dinner helps her to be seated. Ordinarily where there are two servants, the head one holds the chair of the hostess and the second, the chair on the right of the host. The hostess always seats herself as quickly as possible so that the butler may be free to assist a guest to draw her chair up to the table.

In a big house the butler always stands throughout a meal back of the hostess' chair, except when giving one of the men under him a direction, or when pouring wine. He is not supposed to leave the dining-room himself or ever to handle a dish. In a smaller house where he has no assistant, he naturally does everything himself; when he has a second man or parlor-maid, he passes the principal dishes and the assistant follows with the accompanying dishes or vegetables.

So-called "Russian" service is the only one known in New York which merely means that nothing to eat is ever put on the table except ornamental dishes of fruit and candy. The meat is carved in the kitchen or pantry, vegetables are passed and returned to the side table. Only at breakfast or possibly at supper are dishes of food put on the table.

From the setting of the table until it is cleared for dessert, a plate must remain at every cover. Under the first two courses there are always two plates. The plate on which oysters or hors d'oeuvres are served is put on top of the place plate. At the end of the course the used plate is removed, leaving the place plate. The soup plate is also put on top of this same plate. But when the soup plate is removed, the underneath plate is removed with it, and a hot plate immediately exchanged for the two taken away. The place plate merely becomes a hot fish plate, but it is there just the same.

If the first course had been a canapé or any cold dish that was offered in bulk instead of being brought on separate plates, it would have been eaten on the place plate, and an exchange plate would have been necessary before the soup could be served. That is, a clean plate would have been exchanged for the used one, and the soup plate then put on top of that. The reason for it is that a plate with food on it can never be exchanged for a plate that has had food on it; a clean one must come between.

If an entrée served on individual plates follows the fish, clean plates are first exchanged for the used ones until the whole table is set with clean plates. Then the entrée is put at each place in exchange for the clean plate. Although dishes are always presented at the left of the person served, plates are removed and replaced at the right. Glasses are poured and additional knives placed at the right, but forks are put on as needed from the left.

The only plates that can possibly be brought into the dining-room one in each hand are for the hors d'oeuvres, soup and dessert. The first two plates are placed on others which have not been removed, and the dessert plates need merely be put down on the tablecloth. But the plates of every other course have to be exchanged and therefore each individual service requires two hands. Soup plates, two at a time, would better not be attempted by any but the expert and sure-handed, as it is in placing one plate, while holding the other aloft that the mishap of "soup poured down some one's back" occurs! If only one plate of soup is brought in at a time, that accident at least cannot happen. In the same way the spoon and fork on the dessert plate can easily fall off, unless it is held level. "Two plates at a time" therefore is not a question of etiquette, but of the servant's skill.

Once upon a time it was actually considered impolite to remove a single plate until the last guest at the table had finished eating! In other days people evidently did not mind looking at their own dirty plates indefinitely, nor could they have minded sitting for hours at table. Good service to-day requires the removal of each plate as soon as the fork is laid upon it; so that by the time the last fork is put down, the entire table is set with clean plates and is ready for the next course.

At every well-ordered dinner, there should be a double service for ten or twelve persons; that is, no hot dish should, if avoidable, be presented to more than six, or nine at the outside. At a dinner of twelve, for instance, two dishes each holding six portions, are garnished exactly alike and presented at opposite ends of the table. One to the lady on the right of the host, and the other to the lady at the opposite end of the table. The services continue around to the right, but occasional butlers direct that after serving the "lady of honor" on the right of the host, the host is skipped and the dish presented to the lady on his left, after which the dish continues around the table to the left, to ladies and gentlemen as they come. In this event the second service starts opposite the lady of honor and also skips the first gentleman, after which it goes around the table to the left, skips the lady of honor and ends with the host. The first service when it reaches the other end of the table skips the lady who was first served and ends with the gentleman who was skipped.

It is perhaps more polite to the ladies to give them preference, but it is complicated, and leaves another gentleman as well as the host, sitting between two ladies who are eating while he is apparently forgotten. The object (which is to prevent the lady who is second in precedence from being served last) can be accomplished by beginning the first service from the lady on the right of the host and continuing on the right 6 places; the second service begins with the lady on the left of the host and continues on the left five places, and then comes back to the host. The best way of all, perhaps, is to vary the "honor" by serving the entrée and salad courses first to the lady on the left instead of to the lady on the right and continue the service of these two courses to the left.

As soon as the guests are seated and the first course put in front of them, the butler goes from guest to guest on the right hand side of each, and asks "Apollinaris or plain water!" and fills the goblet accordingly. In the same way he asks later before pouring wine: "Cider, sir?" "Grape fruit cup, madam?" Or in a house which has the remains of a cellar, "Champagne?" or "Do you care for whiskey and soda, sir?"

But the temperature and service of wines which used to be an essential detail of every dinner have now no place at all. Whether people will offer frappéd cider or some other iced drink in the middle of dinner, and a warmed something else to take the place of claret with the fish, remains to be seen. A water glass standing alone at each place makes such a meager and untrimmed looking table that most people put on at least two wine glasses, sherry and champagne, or claret and sherry, and pour something pinkish or yellowish into them. A rather popular drink at present is an equal mixture of white grape-juice and ginger ale with mint leaves and much ice. Those few who still have cellars, serve wines exactly as they used to, white wine, claret, sherry and Burgundy warm, champagne ice cold; and after dinner, green mint poured over crushed ice in little glasses, and other liqueurs of room temperature. Whiskey is always poured at the table over ice in a tall tumbler, each gentleman "saying when" by putting his hand out. The glass is then filled with soda or Apollinaris.

As soon as soup is served the parlor-maid or a footman passes a dish or a basket of dinner rolls. If rolls are not available, bread cut in about two-inch-thick slices, is cut cross-ways again in three. An old-fashioned silver cake basket makes a perfect modern bread-basket. Or a small wicker basket that is shallow and inconspicuous will do. A guest helps himself with his fingers and lays the roll or bread on the tablecloth, always. No bread plates are ever on a table where there is no butter, and no butter is ever served at a dinner. Whenever there is no bread left at any one's place at table, more should be passed. The glasses should also be kept filled.

Dishes are presented held flat on the palm of the servant's right hand; every hot one must have a napkin placed as a pad under it. An especially heavy meat platter can be steadied if necessary by holding the edge of the platter with the left hand, the fingers protected from being burned by a second folded napkin.

Each dish is supplied with whatever implements are needed for helping it; a serving spoon (somewhat larger than an ordinary tablespoon) is put on all dishes and a fork of large size is added for fish, meat, salad and any vegetables or other dishes that are hard to help. String beans, braised celery, spinach en branche, etc., need a fork and spoon. Asparagus has various special lifters and tongs, but most people use the ordinary spoon and fork, putting the spoon underneath and the fork, prongs down, to hold the stalks on the spoon while being removed to the plate. Corn on the cob is taken with the fingers, but is never served at a dinner party. A galantine or mousse, as well as peas, mashed potatoes, rice, etc., are offered with a spoon only.

The serving table is an ordinary table placed in the corner of the dining-room near the door to the pantry, and behind a screen, so that it may not be seen by the guests at table. In a small dining-room where space is limited, a set of shelves like a single bookcase is useful.

The serving table is a halfway station between the dinner table and the pantry. It holds stacks of cold plates, extra forks and knives, and the finger bowls and dessert plates. The latter are sometimes put out on the sideboard, if the serving table is small or too crowded.

At little informal dinners all dishes of food after being passed are left on the serving table in case they are called upon for a second helping. But at formal dinners, dishes are never passed twice, and are therefore taken direct to the pantry after being passed.

At dinner always, whether at a formal one, or whether a member of the family is alone, the salad plates, or the plates of whatever course precedes dessert, are removed, leaving the table plateless. The salt cellars and pepper pots are taken off on the serving tray (without being put on any napkin or doily, as used to be the custom), and the crumbs are brushed off each place at table with a folded napkin onto a tray held under the table edge. A silver crumb scraper is still seen occasionally when the tablecloth is plain, but its hard edge is not suitable for embroidery and lace, and ruinous to a bare table, so that a napkin folded to about the size and thickness of an iron-holder is the crumb-scraper of to-day.

The captious say "dessert means the fruit and candy which come after the ices." "Ices" is a misleading word too, because suggestive of the individual "ices" which flourished at private dinners in the Victorian age, and still survive at public dinners, suppers at balls, and at wedding breakfasts, but which are seen at not more than one private dinner in a thousand—if that.

In the present world of fashion the "dessert" is ice-cream, served in one mold; not ices (a lot of little frozen images). And the refusal to call the "sweets" at the end of the dinner, which certainly include ice cream and cake, "dessert," is at least not the interpretation of either good usage or good society. In France, where the word "dessert" originated, "ices" were set apart from dessert merely because French chefs delight in designating each item of a meal as a separate course. But chefs and cook-books notwithstanding, dessert means everything sweet that comes at the end of a meal. And the great American dessert is ice cream—or pie. Pie, however, is not a "company" dessert. Ice cream on the other hand is the inevitable conclusion of a formal dinner. The fact that the spoon which is double the size of a teaspoon is known as nothing but a dessert spoon, is offered in further proof that "dessert" is "spoon" and not "finger" food!

There are two, almost equally used, methods of serving dessert. The first or "hotel method," also seen in many fashionable private houses, is to put on a china plate for ice cream or a first course, and the finger bowl on a plate by itself, afterwards. In the "private house" service, the entire dessert paraphernalia is put on at once.

In detail: In the two-course, or hotel, service, the "dessert" plate is of china, or if of glass, it must have a china one under it. A china dessert plate is just a fairly deep medium sized plate and it is always put on the table with a "dessert" spoon and fork on it. After the inevitable ice cream has been eaten, a fruit plate with a finger bowl on it, is put on in exchange. A doily goes under the finger bowl, and a fruit knife and fork on either side.