A like rule obtains with regard to salads. To cut is to bruise the tender esculents, and to injure the flavor. The leaves of lettuce should be torn apart in preparing it for the table, with as little handling as possible, and eaten as soon as the salad is dressed. Other salads—as beets, celery, etc., are cut up and ready for eating when sent to table. To use the knife upon them is a reflection upon cook and host.
To butter a whole slice of bread at once—especially when it is laid on the table in order to do it—is slovenly, wasteful and awkward. If eaten as a whole, one must gnaw or nibble at it, and to cut it after it is buttered is neither neat nor convenient.
The fashion of finger-bowl and napkin would seem to commend itself to everybody as eminently cleanly and comfortable. Yet there are still well-to-do people who sneer at the idea of “doing one’s washing at the table.”
The by-law obeyed by the transient guest who lays his napkin carelessly on the table when the meal is over, instead of folding it, is easily understood. To fold it implies that it may be used again before it is washed.
“Mr. Blank has no napkin, James!” said a hostess of the nouveau riche order, to her butler.
“I beg pardon!” interposed the guest, lifting a corner of the napkin from his knee that she might see her mistake. “I have one.”
“Ah!” with an apologetic smile. “I saw that you did not have it on!”
To tuck the napkin into the collar, or pin it around the neck before attacking one’s food may be a wise precaution if one has never learned to convey it to the mouth without dropping or dripping it. Gentlemen are supposed to have put away bibs with other childish things. The suggestion of putting a napkin “on” is not agreeable. The place for the useful bit of fine linen is on the knee or lap, out of sight of fellow-eaters.
Black coffee in after-dinner coffee cups is a digestive agent—a gastronomic expletive—not a beverage. To cream it is to pervert its meaning, and to defeat the end for which it is served. It is well known that the addition of cream or milk to coffee causes a chemical change in both ingredients. To some stomachs creamed coffee, or café au lait, is poisonous. Clear black coffee is a tonic, and agrees with everybody.