The diner helps himself with the knife laid ready beside the pieces of cheese, not with his own knife. If watercress is handed round, it is taken up in the fingers and eaten in the same way. Cheese is cut in small pieces and conveyed to the mouth on a piece of bread or biscuit. Very few persons continue to eat it in the old-fashioned way by carrying it to the mouth with the knife. I have seen it taken up with the fingers, but as cheese is apt to smell rather strongly it is better to avoid touching it.
A safe rule with sweets.
With regard to sweets, it is a safe rule to use the fork only when it suffices for the work in hand. With tarts, as a rule, both spoon and fork are necessary, especially when there is syrup. Cold tart can often be comfortably eaten with a fork. Jellies and creams are eaten with a fork only; ice-pudding with an ice-spoon, or, failing that, a teaspoon.
From the moment one has unfolded one’s napkin and placed the bread it contained at one’s left, there is nothing more to do that concerns the “cover,” as the preparation for each diner’s convenience is called, until the dessert-plate, with its d’oyley, finger-glass, silver knife and fork—and perhaps ice-plate and spoon in addition—is set down before one.
Placing the dessert knife and fork.
D’oyley and finger-glass.
Before the or dessert are handed round, one must place the dessert-knife and fork at right and left, respectively, of one’s plate, and, taking up the finger-glass carefully in one hand, with the other place the d’oyley on the cloth to the left of one’s plate, then setting the finger-glass down upon it. I say “carefully,” because these glasses are often of the lightest possible kind, and are occasionally of a costly description. Besides, rough handling might tend to spill the water they contain.
Dessert.
With regard to the dessert fruits, &c., there are a few puzzles to be found among them for the inexperienced.
Grapes.