It should not be necessary to remind people in this day that the knife must only be used for the purpose of cutting food. When it has fulfilled this duty, being wielded by the right hand, the food being held in place by the fork in the left, the fork is then taken in the right hand, and the knife laid, with the edge turned outward, across the back of the plate. It is generally supposed that all classes know the use of the knife, yet in a fashionable restaurant there recently sat a handsomely-attired woman carrying French peas to her mouth with the blade of her knife. However, it is not so long since Chesterfield gave elaborate directions as to the proper way to eat with the knife! “Other times, other manners!”
It is an atrocity to pile several kinds of food upon the fork, mold them into a small mound with the knife, and then “dump” the load into wide-open jaws. Each kind of viand should be lifted, a small bit at a time, upon the fork. Mastication should be absolutely noiseless, and the process conducted with the lips closed.
Bread, even when hot, may be broken off, a small piece at a time, buttered upon the plate, then eaten. All hot bread should be torn open or broken with the fingers, never cut into bits. To butter a slice of bread by laying it upon the table or, more disgusting still, upon the palm of the hand, is a relic of barbarism. At breakfast and luncheon the small bread and butter plate, with a small knife, is set at the upper left-hand side of the place and the bread should be kept on it.
HOW TO EAT FRUITS
Such fruits as apples or peaches are peeled with a small silver fruit knife, cut into quarters and eaten with the fingers. Oranges are peeled and then pulled apart or they may—at breakfast—be cut in halves and eaten with the aid of the sharp-toothed orange spoon. Grapes should be eaten from behind the half-closed hand into which skin and the seeds then fall.
It is permissible to use one’s knife to convey salt from one’s individual salt-cellar, if no tiny spoon for this purpose is supplied. But the salt shaker is a much more convenient device, though in damp weather the maid must see that the salt will “shake.”