I have a habit of making sounds while eating. How can I eat more quietly, especially when I am eating raw onions or chips etc.? This is a silly question, but I have tried several times and ended up being too slow or too noisy.
Jayant Prabhune, Pune, India
Not a silly question at all. Many have this problem. Sam Johnson, the secular patron saint of England, was a notoriously noisy and messy eater. All we messy eaters can do is to try to curb our hunger and/or greed, if necessary by eating a doughnut or Peshwari naan as padding before going out to dinner, to take the edge off our appetite. By taking it easy. By eating with our mouths shut, not open. The only manners that matter at table are not upsetting others by our behaviour. Slowness, cunning and stealth make such camouflage easier. We may even have to go easy on the raw onions in public, dammit.
There seems to be more of an acceptance of elbows on the dinner table at certain times these days. I was always told there was never a place for elbows on the table. Is there a place for elbows? If so when is it appropriate?
Luke Crabb, Sydney
Elbows on the table were considered bad manners in old-fashioned establishments. Victorian nannies who saw their charges with elbows on the table at meals would crash them down on the table as hard as possible, exclaiming as they did so: ‘All joints on the table are meant to be carved.’ Manners have changed. We are more relaxed than our grandparents, and even our parents. It is still bad manners to put one’s elbows on the table at a formal meal. It looks casual, and it is bad luck on your neighbour on the elbow side. But at less formal meals elbows are often rested on the table without causing offence.
What is the best way to act while dining when asked a question after just having had a mouthful of food? Do you hurriedly chew, looking rather unglamorous, or simply swallow your food and risk choking? Taking one’s time chewing before answering the question creates an uncomfortable silent pause.
Carro Janek, London
Above all, keep calm. Do not try to answer with your mouth full. You run the risk of spraying your neighbours with half-masticated gobbets of food, or of being unintelligible through Irish stew. The polite deipnosophist should have waited for a pause in your mastication before putting the question to you. But since he or she didn’t, finish your mouthful before replying. Signal with hand pointing to jaw that you are chewing, and intend to reply shortly. This gives you time to work out a witty, or at any rate a convincing, answer.
I was at a formal dinner where sorbet was served after the soup. A guest raised the question of smoking during the sorbet course but there were no Turkish cigarettes on the table, and the toastmaster was unaware of the practice.
Barrie Cross, by e-mail
The sorbet intercourse between the fish and the main course is a survival of the gargantuan dinners in the days of King Edward ‘Tum Tum’ VII. It was the custom to offer fat, coloured Turkish cigarettes before the diners plunged into the meat and veg. The sorbet intercourse is rarely served now and it is almost impossible to find Turkish cigarettes. To smoke before the meal is over is now reckoned bad manners and inconsiderate. Table manners do change. After all, our Tudor monarchs used to pick up the mutton bone to chew it, before chucking it over their shoulder to the hounds. To do so today would be regarded as eccentric.
When eating a fish dish, what is the good-mannered way to extract any bones that are found during the meal?
Chris Hill, Dorchester-on-Thames
If the bone is on your plate, use your fork and fingers. If the bone is stuck in your teeth, use fingers, possibly assisted by a napkin. The important thing is to make the removal of the bone as inconspicuous as possible, since its survival in the fish dish is a reflection on the cook.
At dinner with friends, there was a discussion as to how a napkin should be worn. The men believed that the best method would be to tuck it into the collar (godfather style); the women preferred placing it in the lap.
Andrew Green, Epping
Men are messier eaters and less vain of their necklines than women. The lap is the polite British place for the napkin. To tuck it into one’s shirt is considered to be Frenchified and common, and to show too keen an interest in one’s grub. It also necessitates taking off one’s tie. Nevertheless, for eating bouillabaisse or chicken vindaloo, the neck may be a sensible place for the napkin. Not at posh Kensington dinner parties, though.
Is it correct to start eating as soon as you have been served or to wait until the last person at the table has been given food? I maintain that it is impolite to allow your host’s food to go cold. However, there is often uncertainty around the table.
Peter Murray, London W4
At formal dinners, wait until everyone has been served before splashing into the mock turtle. At private dinners, wait for an instruction from your host(ess). He/she often says: ‘For heaven’s sake don’t wait.’
My wife and I are going to stay at a grand house, where the hostess always gives a very grand dinner party for twenty-four people. The thought of the fish course is beginning to terrify us. Our hostess considers fish knives and forks ‘a quite distasteful affectation from the Edwardian era’, and will only countenance what she refers to as ‘the true piscatorial practice as developed in the eighteenth century’, that is to say, the use of two forks. My wife and I have been brought up to use a knife and fork. There may be a gap in our social education. How should we approach the fish? Would it be correct to ask the butler for an appropriate knife? My wife thinks that perhaps our hostess doesn’t have enough knives to go round.
H. M., Roehampton
The argument about fish knives is an old class and party political shibboleth. In the nineteenth century, pea-brained High Tories looked down their long beaks at the invention of special knives and forks for eating fish as a Whiggish innovation, made by upstarts who had to buy their cutlery rather than inherit the ancestral silver. Do not be terrified. Do not join in their snobbish games unless you want to. It is polite to use the equipment that your hostess provides, so watch how she uses her forks, and copy her. Otherwise, boldly ask the butler for a knife, and be damned to silly snobbery over fishy trifles.
I have been invited to a dinner at which beluga caviar will be on the menu. A friend told me that it is presented and consumed in a special way and, for those who imbibe, followed by a special spirit. He then pleaded ignorance. Can you please help?
Reg Pierce, Wrexham
Well, lucky you, Reg. Expect thinnest (Melba) toast and vodka. There may also be a toast with every swig. Squeezing a little lemon on is deemed OK. Nowadays chopped hard-boiled egg and chopped onion garnish is considered not echt, though I used to like it when they served it in first class on Pan Am – happy days. You should be ready with witty toasts, just in case. And eat yoghurt before you go, in case you are in for a heavy drinking session. To make Melba toast, toast a slice of bread as lightly as possible and slice in half longitudinally. Put thin halves in the oven, where they will turn brown and curl slightly up. Or roll the slice as flat as a pancake with a rolling-pin before toasting.
Which is correct – dip your chips into the sauce, or use a knife to put the sauce on the chip?
Catherine Hicks, Maidstone
Chips with everything, especially sauce, is a British peculiar. Correctitude has nothing to do with it. Food snobs consider chips, whether dipped in the sauce or smeared with sauce from the knife, as low life, what Americans would describe as trailer trashy. Let us not fall into the snobs’ sauce over this. We are eating peasant food here, like fish ’n’ chips with vinegar out of yesterday’s Times. Delicious. Personally when doing so with the small boys, I dip my chips in the sauce. To smear the sauce on with a knife is tricky and looks inappropriately genteel. Chips and sauce are perfectly delicious. But they are not correct grub. So it doesn’t matter how you anoint them. Eat to please yourself, not the snobs.
I am an Asian who has lived in this country for more than three decades. My wife is very fond of laying the table with full linen and cutlery when we entertain friends. When some of them decide instead to eat with their hands, it disturbs me and also other guests. I do not mind what rules and regulations they have in their own homes, but I expect them to show some respect and courtesy along with full table etiquette in ours. Is there any way of pointing out this problem to them, or would that be too rude?
AnonymoSingh, Anonywhere
It is good manners for guests to adopt the table customs of their host and hostess. When in Rome, eat as the Romans do. The same applies to all peoples and tribes. But I feel quite strongly that you should not point this out to your friends. None of us enjoys being corrected over our manners. Your friends obviously feel at home with you, so that they can let their hair down and eat with their fingers. This is a great compliment to your generous hospitality and heart. (The best curry that I ever ate, by korma, was with my fingers, off a banana leaf, in a garden in Delhi, with fireworks exploding in the background.)
Table manners vary widely. The only etiquette that matters is to eat your food in a tidy way that does not offend your fellow-diners. Even then, friendship matters a great deal more than forks, and spontaneity more than spoons. It would be unkind to raise the matter of their eating habits with your friends. Be a generous and humorous host.
My wife (seventy-eight), with a good set of her own teeth, cannot abide the sight of my upper plate when out of my mouth. I am eighty-two. We need to know the correct etiquette for removing it in company, say, when a sharp raspberry seed gets stuck. Also guidance about the modern custom of using a toothpick when out for a meal with friends.
Incognito, Lincolnshire
Such dental operations are most politely performed in private, i.e., in a cloakroom. But if you cannot find privacy, I should at any rate hoist up a screen of napkin while you fiddle with your denture. Toothpicks are widely deployed at tables on the Continent, without causing surprise or offence. In the United Kingdom, the toothpick is viewed with xeno-suspicion. The polite Englishman picks his teeth discreetly. Good manners consist of not upsetting the prejudices and peculiarities of one’s companions.
Is it correct to pick a bone up from the plate to nibble the parts too difficult to tackle with a knife and fork?
Frederick Brookes, Bolnore
Depends on the place, company and bone under consideration. Like all table manners, etiquette varies chronologically, geographically and tribally. Picking up a bone to chaw was perfectly good manners at the robust board of King Henry VIII, after which you chucked the remains over your shoulder for the greyhounds.
This would not be appropriate if you are invited to lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace today, though the corgis would be pleased. There are some items on the menu that can be dealt with only with the fingers, except by dexterous operators of cutlery. For example, artichokes, mussels, Pacific prawns, other shellfish, asparagus and lamb chops. Some larger bones are more problematic e.g. turkey, T-bone. The prudent guest observes how his host(ess) deals with the problem, and follows suit. He also observes the conventions of his place of dining. What is perfectly acceptable in a students’ common room is unacceptable at the Mansion House.
Which is the correct end to open a boiled egg? Little or big end?
Puzzled, Salisbury
This vexed question caused a terrible war in Gulliver’s Travels. ‘It is computed that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end. Many large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden…’ It doesn’t matter a tossed eggshell. What matters is not to spill egg yolk on your shirt. And to share your toast soldiers with others.
In the course of dining, there are occasions when it is necessary to leave the table. When this occurs, where is the correct place to put one’s table napkin?
J. B. Sullivan, Wallasey
Etiquette prescribes no single correct place. Between courses, on your mat, if there is not an uncleared plate already there. On the seat of your chair. Or over your glass, if you suspect that your neighbour on your right is likely to take a crafty sip of your wine while you are away.
I wonder if you can settle an argument. When making a round of tea, is it correct to pour milk into the cups before pouring the tea or add the milk afterwards?
Margaret Heywood, Pinner
There is no single ‘correct’ procedure for serving tea. But there are two separate, and sometimes strongly contested, schools of tea-pouring.
The first says that ‘mother’, or whoever is doing the serving, puts the milk in first and then adds the tea. The most absurd reason that I have heard for this school is that putting the boiling tea in first may crack your delicate china teacups. This procedure has the advantage of economy of movement. It avoids passing the milk/cream/lemon around the tea-drinkers.
The host(ess) of the second school pours just the tea, and leaves it up to the tea-drinkers to add milk ad lib. This has the advantage of allowing the drinker to judge the quantity of milk to his/her taste. I dare say that these schools of tea-drinking divide along regional, tribal, personal and class contours. I understand that it is the custom in grand circles to pass the milk/cream in a silver jug or cow-creamer. But it really doesn’t matter, provided that you serve decent tea. It is interesting that only the British pollute this delicate Oriental infusion with cow juice and sugar.
What is the correct way to eat a banana? Does one unpeel it as one eats, holding the skin, or unpeel the whole banana first? I do the latter when having my lunch at my desk and my colleagues seem to find this amusing.
Anne Hamilton, Berkshire
At dessert at the dinner table, you are provided with a dainty little knife and fork to tackle the fruit. I can manage a banana, but am frightened to attempt an orange. I do not believe that there is a correct informal method of eating a banana. On the one hand, the banana is provided with a neat, unfolding handle of skin. On the other hand, I think that I usually follow your practice of unpeeling the whole banana before inserting one end into my mouth. It doesn’t matter. Your colleagues are foolish to mock you for your banana-eating process. All that matters is that we eat the delicious fruit tidily, not gobbling it like the Bandar-log; and do not chuck the skin at our neighbours, or leave it to trip up the unwary.
When one has finished eating the main course at a formal dinner, how should the knife and fork be placed?
Robin Protheroe, Bristol
Formal etiquette ordains that when one has finished eating one’s main course, the knife and fork should be placed at half past six on the plate, seen as a clock face from above. This is a signal to the company and waiters that you have finished and that your plate is ready to be cleared away. If you have merely paused for conversation, and intend to resume in a minute, knife and fork are rested at twenty past eight. The cutting edge of the knife should face inwards to the fork.
Manners are divided about whether the tines of the fork should face upwards or downwards towards the plate. I favour the downwards position, protecting whomever picks up the plate from being spiked. Serious pedants of table manners say that when knife and fork are in the ‘finished’ position, they should be parallel and adjacent, but not quite touching. But this is practised only by Saint-Simons of the table.
I just don’t know how to behave in front of my boyfriend’s parents any more. Whenever we have lunch or dinner together, his father will sooner or later either burp or break wind in the most disgusting manner. No one seems to be bothered by it, but it really makes me lose my appetite and so I try to avoid any family gatherings. I explained the matter to my boyfriend but he thought I was overreacting.
Name and address withheld
Even the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Pope fart and burp. In Western manners it is polite to ignore the embarrassing noises, and carry on regardless. I would find his behaviour eccentric and comical. To cold-shoulder family gatherings for such a common human function seems to me unduly fastidious. Kind hearts are worth more than coarse farts. And a loving boyfriend should count for more than his daddy’s bad manners.
What is the correct way to eat soup? I have been told that the spoon should move away from the diner to the far side of the bowl before being lifted to the mouth. Is this correct?
Fiona Hyde, Hampstead
Prudence not correctitude dictates our custom of drinking (eating, if it is Scotch broth) soup. Soup is drunk from the side of the spoon, never the end. Dip the spoon sideways into the soup at the bowl edge nearest you, push the spoon across the bowl, lifting out at the far side. In this way, if there are any drips or splashes, they will fall back into the bowl, not on you. When the bowl is almost empty, tip it away from you slightly, and scoop up what is left.
But the principle is to drink your soup neatly, without splashing yourself or your neighbours, and without smacking of lips. If the soup is served in large soup plates (bowls), the spoon is left in the bowl at half past six when you have finished. If served in bouillon cups, put the spoon on the saucer.
German etiquette says to hold meat down with the fork ends, cut it and then turn round the fork to form a curved tray onto which you push the food with the knife. My English friends push the food uphill onto the back of the fork, which is considered shocking in Germany. Who is right?
Dr Sylvia Huebbe, Uckfield
The middle-class convention in England is to use the fork as a harpoon, not a shovel. Germany follows the American fashion. Neither is correct, or rather both are. The princess from Constantinople who married the Doge of Venice in the eleventh century brought a golden table fork with her. The bishop reprimanded her for antisocial and elitist table manners. When in Venice, eat as the Venetians do.
I like to eat with my fork alone, taking up my knife only when I have to cut something. My girlfriend ticks me off for farmyard manners. Who is right?
Mike Attfield, Bury St Edmunds
It is a prudent principle for the man to assume that his girlfriend is always right. Well, nearly always. Why fall out over such a trivial matter as the proper use of cutlery? It is good manners to eat neatly, dexterously, without slurping or other rude noises, without splashing one’s neighbours, and without causing disagreement with one’s friends.
At a posh dinner, is it true that guests are expected to talk to the person on their left during the starter course and the person on their right for the next course? Won’t that mean that they will all be looking left for the soup and all looking right during the venison, gazing at the back of their neighbour’s head? We are puzzled. Surely you know the answer.
A. F., Wapping
I have heard of this rule of etiket, but never experienced it. Perhaps I have not been to a posh-enough dinner. But it sounds to me like a mad attempt to turn the table into a Prussian drill yard. It would formalise what is supposed to be a pleasant social occasion. Would the host(ess) act as fuglewoman, and signal for everybody to switch from left to right like marionettes? Spread yourself around at dinner, but show more interest in your neighbours than yourself. They share your preference.
That eminent Victorian Lord Curzon – quoted among others by Ben Schott in one of his anthologies – once stated that gentlemen do not take soup at luncheon. Why?
Simon Rostron, London EC1
Curzon was sent the proposed menu for a luncheon for a royal visitor to Balliol. He glossed in the margin: ‘Gentlemen do not take soup at luncheon.’ The Ritz and the Garrick Club disagree with him. George Nathaniel Curzon had viceregal tastes and prejudices. We do not have to share them. But if you decide to drink soup at lunch the rules that matter are not to slurp, not to splash, tilt the soup bowl away from you when you want to spoon up the dregs, leave your soup spoon at 6 p.m. if you have finished, and at 4 p.m. if you are just resting.
You quote the correct sequence for letters following a name. One of them is ‘Esq.’. I am sure people would be interested to learn of the rules for entitlement to the use of esquire (or Esq.).
George Stoney, CorrectVille
Indeed there are rules. These are largely obsolescent. An esquire was at first ‘a young man of gentle birth, who, as an aspirant to knighthood, attended upon a knight, carried his shield, and rendered him other services’. It became also ‘a man belonging to the higher order of English gentry, ranking immediately below a knight’. Several classes of men became entitled to be called esquires – younger sons of peers, eldest sons of knights, judges, barristers-at-law and many others. By now Esq. has lost all sense of rank, and can be attached (in correspondence) to the name of any adult male. In the US, Esq. is often used by lawyers, both male and female, when referring to or addressing one another in writing. The suffix is dying, let it die.
What attitude should I take to escargots at the dinner table?
Peter Foster, Newcastle upon Tyne
The deipnosophist approaches the dinner snail with relish and a big napkin. He needs to like garlic. Who doesn’t? He needs fresh rolls of bread and a tub of good salted butter for mopping. Pick up the delicate gastropod with the snail clamp. Excavate the snail with the little fork. Enjoy. Tilt the shell down your snail-hole to drain the last of the juice.
I am a hearty eater. I tend to finish my food long before my companions at the table. Any advice please?
Harry Groser, Northampton
By Hercules, King of the Gobblers, at least you recognise the problem. Try ordering the food that you least like at the restaurant. Practise fiddling with the last peas and mashed potato on your plate. Take a lively interest in the opinions and chatter of your companions. My parents, embarrassed by what they perceived as the greed of their children at parties, filled us up with buns before we arrived. Puritanical? But, if pusher comes to shovel, follow Epicurus rather than Zeno, the Stoic: ‘We say that pleasure is the starting point and the end of living blissfully. For we recognise pleasure as a good which is primary and innate.’
If you have unwanted food on your plate, do you leave it as it is or do you push it into a neat pile?
Robert Potter, Binfield
The fastidious diner does not leave unwanted food on his plate. He has helped himself to the right amount. If he has miscalculated, he leaves the uneaten residue as it lies and lays his knife and fork at 6.30 hours (tines upward please). The exception is if you wish to conceal your distaste for your host(ess)’s cooking. It may then be good manners to conceal the rancid haddock beneath the mashed potato. At school we used to shovel the fish pie into our sponge bags, when the beak wasn’t looking.
By the time the cheeseboard reaches me its knife is ‘soiled’ by cheeses other than the one I select. How does one overcome this?
Reg Gale, Lighthorne
Fastidious Trimalchio! The cheeseboard should carry a napkin with it. You could wipe the knife on the napkin. You could clean it by cutting the apple that should accompany cheese. You could clean the cheese knife by first cutting a small slice of Edam or some other hard cheese and discarding the slice. Only a slob would mix his Cheddar with his Roquefort, on the greedy ground that cheese is cheese.
Are there any etiquette schools in the UK that I can send my husband to? He was not brought up with proper table manners etc. and if I am bothered by it I assume that his professional colleagues may be as well. I know, I know. You can lead a horse to water but…
Name and address withheld
There are such schools for ‘polite’ behaviour – you can find them on the Internet. But I doubt that they are worth a single mushy pea. You don’t really want him to be starched and stitched up by some ghastly Skool of Etiket. The only table manners that matter are modesty and tidiness. How you hold your fork doesn’t matter, except for snobs who think that their way must be correct. Encourage him lovingly to eat tidily, not wolfishly.