Table Manners and Etiquette

Do these:

• Use a knife for cutting meat, lettuce or anything that does not cut easily with a fork, and for spreading margarine or jelly.

• Use a fork for eating a brick ice cream, cake with sticky icing, jelly and ices serves with meat, and all meats and vegetables.

• Use a spoon for dipping soup, testing beverages from temperature stirring beverages, eating ice cream from a sherbet glass, eating pudding and cereals, and for removing small bits of cooked fruits from the mouth

• Use fingers for eating potato chips, relishes such as pickles and radishes, eating dry crisp bacon and cake which is not sticky, removing fish bones, small fruit pits, or seeds of fresh from the mouth, and for eating bread and crackers.

• Meats should be cut into not more than three or four bites at a time. Knife and fork should be used for tougher meat, the edge of the fork for every tender meat.

• Chicken should be cut off, the bone with a knife. In every informal situation, it may be picked up with the fingers delicately.

• Fish is usually tender enough to cut with the edge of a fork; bones can be removed with the fingers and placed on the plate.

• Corn on the cob should not appear on a very formal menu. It may already be buttered or can be buttered a few bites at a time. It can be picked up with the fingers on one kind.

• Soups should be eaten with a spoon, dipped away from the person eating.

• Salad should be eaten with a salad fork when served as a separate course. If served with the main course, they may be eaten with dinner fork or fork salad. Head lettuce maybe cut with a knife a little at a time.

• Relishes should be on dinner plate if you expect to eat them with your fork as an accompaniment to the main dish, on the bread and butter plate if you expect them to eat with bread, or on salad plate if you expect to eat them as a salad. Pits are removed from the mouth with fingers and placed on the plate.

• Sandwiches maybe picked up with the fingers unless hot or covered with gravy. Large sandwiches may be broken with the fingers or cut with the knife, using the other hand to steady them.

• Fresh fruits served at the table may be quartered and peeled with the fruit knife provided, and eaten with fingers. If very juicy, they may be eaten with a fork. Bananas should be peeled down halfway, a small piece broken off, eaten one at a time with the fork. Grapes are eaten one at a time, and seeds and skin removed from the mouth with the fingers and placed on the plate. Oranges may be cut crosswise and eaten with a spoon or peeled and eaten with the fingers.

• Bread should be broken into small pieces (usually fourths) if served in slices, held on the butter plate and buttered. Rolls and muffins and biscuits may be broken open with the fingers and butter inserted if they are hot. Bread not eaten should be left on the bread and butter plate or on dinner plate, if there is no bread and butter plate.

Avoid these:

• Chewing with the mouth open, or talking with it full.

• Dipping food in soup or coffee.

• Stacking dishes after eating.

• Crumbling crackers into the soup.

• Resting elbows on the table.

• Buttering whole slices of bread at once.

• Eating with a knife.

• Leaving spoon in a cup or glass.

• Slipping soup noisily.

• Pushing the plate back when finished eating.

• Using a tooth pick in front of others.

• Slumping in your chairs.