The Mentor. Ayres Alfred

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СКАЧАТЬ not let it be seen that you have any objection to doing so, nor let it be known that you ever do otherwise. He that advised us “to do in Rome as the Romans do” was a true gentleman.

      The fork is used in eating such vegetables as can be easily managed with it; those that cannot be easily managed with it are eaten with a dessert-spoon – peas, stewed tomatoes, and succotash, for example, especially when they are served in small dishes. A high English authority says: “Eat peas with a dessert-spoon, and curry also.”

      Asparagus may be handled with the fingers of the left hand. So may Saratoga potatoes and olives. On this subject we recently clipped the following paragraph from one of our periodicals: “That there is a variety of ways to eat asparagus, one may convince one’s self by a single visit to the dining-room of any of our fashionable summer hotels. There one will see all the methods of carrying the stalk to the mouth. But the Paris Figaro, in one of its ‘Conseils par Jour,’ on ‘How is Asparagus Eaten in Good Society?’ says: ‘One must carefully abstain from taking the stalk in the fingers to dip it in the sauce and afterward put it in the mouth, as a great many people do. The tip should be cut off and eaten by means of the fork, the rest of the stalk being laid aside on the plate, of course without being touched by the fingers. Those that proceed in any other way are barbarians.’ We may observe, in reply to ‘Pau de Paris,’ that many persons belonging to the best society do not hesitate to eat asparagus à la bonne franquette, and yet are by no means ‘barbarians.’ We do not agree with our confrère for two reasons. In the first place, the exquisite vegetable cannot be properly appreciated unless eaten in the way that excites the ire of our contemporary. Our second reason is that, from an art point of view, there cannot be a more charming sight than to see a pretty woman ‘caressing’ a piece of asparagus.”

      Green corn should be cut from the cob and then eaten with a fork. First run your knife through the middle of each row of kernels and then cut them off. A dull knife is the best, because it does not really cut the kernels off, but forces them out of the hulls.

      Cheese is eaten with a fork, or is placed, with a knife, on bits of bread and carried to the mouth with the thumb and finger, care being taken not to touch the cheese.

      Pies and pâtés, as a rule, are eaten with a fork only. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to use a knife to divide the crust, but not often.

      “Jellies, blanc-mange, iced puddings, and the like are eaten,” says an English authority, “with a fork, as are all sweets sufficiently substantial to admit of it.” This may be very sensible, but it will seem to many persons, as it does to the writer, to be very senseless. By and by the fork mania will banish the spoon altogether.

      In a late number of the London Queen this fork-and-spoon question is discussed as follows: “But to go back to the debatable lands of our own compatriots, and the odd things that some do, and the undecided cases that still give rise to controversy. There is that battlefield of the fork and the spoon, and whether the former ought to be used for all sweets whatsoever, with the exception of custard and gooseberry food, which answer the question for themselves; or whether it is not better to use a spoon where slipperiness is an element, and ‘the solution of continuity’ a condition. Some people hunt their ice, for example, with a fork, which lets the melting margin drop through the prongs; and some stick their small trident into jelly, at the risk of seeing the whole thing slip off like an amorphous, translucent, gold-colored snake. The same with such compounds as custard pudding, crème renversée, and the like, where it is a feat of skill to skewer the separate morsels deftly, and where a small sea of unutilized juice is left on the plate. This monotonous use of the fork and craven fear of the vulgarity lying in the spoon seems to us mere table snobbery. It is a well-known English axiom that the fork is to be used in preference to the spoon when possible and convenient. But the people who use it always – when scarcely possible and decidedly inconvenient – are people so desperately afraid of not doing the right thing, that they do the wrong out of very flunkeyism and of fear of Mrs. Grundy in the corner. It is the same with the law of eating all soft meats with the fork only, abjuring the knife. On the one hand, you will see people courageously hewing with their knives at sweetbread, suprême de volaille, and the like; on the other, the snobbish fine work themselves into a fever with their forks against a cutlet, and would not for the lives of them use a knife to cut with ease that which by main force and at great discomfort they can tear asunder with a fork.”

      If you have occasion to help yourself from a dish, or if any one else helps you, move your plate quite close to the dish.

      At a dinner served in courses, it is better, as a rule, not to take a second supply of anything. It might delay the dinner.

      The English eat boiled eggs from the shell, a custom that is followed to some extent in this country; but most Americans prefer to break them, or to have them broken, into a glass, a mode that certainly has its advantages, and that will commend itself to those that have not time to dawdle over their breakfast. In noticing a little book on manners that recently appeared, the New York Sun feelingly inveighs in this wise against eating boiled eggs from a glass:

      “We are glad to think that the time has gone by when Americans with any pretensions to refinement needed to be informed that an egg beaten up in a glass is an unsightly mess that has often turned the stomach of the squeamish looker-on. Those who cannot learn to eat boiled eggs from the shell will do well to avoid them altogether. If the author of this hand-book had watched American experiments with exhaustive attention, he might have deemed it well to add that no part of the contents of the egg should be allowed to drip down the outside of the shell, and that the eggshell, when depleted, should be broken before being deposited on the plate.”

      It would seem to be as unpleasant to the writer of this paragraph to see an egg eaten from a glass as it is to a Bavarian to see a man wait till he gets over the threshold of a lager-beer saloon before he takes his hat off. A matter of mere prejudice in both cases. If an egg broken into a glass is really “an unsightly mess,” then let us have some opaque egg-glasses.

      Bread should be broken. To butter a large piece of bread and then bite it, as children do, is something the knowing never do.

      In eating game or poultry do not touch the bones with your fingers. To take a bone in the fingers for the purpose of picking it is looked upon as being a very inelegant proceeding.

      Never gesticulate with your knife or fork in your hand, nor hold them pointing upward when you are not using them; keep them down on your plate.

      Never load up your fork with food until you are ready to convey it to your mouth, unless you are famishing and you think your life depends on your not losing a second.

      Never put your own knife into the butter or the salt if there is a butter-knife and a salt-spoon. If you are compelled to use your own knife, first wipe it as clean as possible on your bread.

      Never use your own knife or fork to help another. Use rather the knife or fork of the person you help.

      Never send your knife and fork, or either of them, on your plate when you send for a second supply. There are several good reasons for not doing so, and not one good reason for doing so. Never hold your knife and fork meanwhile in your hand, either, but lay them down, and that, too, with something under them – a piece of bread, for example – to protect the table-cloth. Never carry your food to your mouth with any curves or flourishes, unless you want to look as though you were airing your company manners. Better a pound of awkwardness at any time than an ounce of self-consciousness.

      Never use a steel knife to cut fruit if there is a silver one.

      Never stick your elbows out when you use your knife and fork. Keep them close to your sides.

      Having finished using your knife and fork, lay them on your plate, side by side, with the handles pointing СКАЧАТЬ