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Chapter 1 ~ The History of Dining Etiquette

Would you believe that dining etiquette has been around for thousands of years? It has literally taken thousands of years to develop a complex system of manners, which led us to where we are now. Research has shown that the first known etiquette scroll was written around 2500 BC by an Egyptian name Ptahhotep. This scroll is called the “Instructions of Ptahhotep” after its author. Over the centuries, manners evolved or de-evolved.

In the Middle Ages most men never left home without their knives. They hung their knives at their waist for quick access to kill an enemy or to slice their meat. In the 11th century, the people in Europe ate with their fingers. Yet, a well-bred person used only three fingers, the thumb, index and middle. When forks were first used in Tuscany around the 11th century, they were condemned by the clergy who believed that food was a gift from God and only the human hand was fit to receive gifts from God.

In the 13th century, etiquette books were common in Europe as the upper class needed to know how to behave in the royal court. Around 1530, Desiderius Erasmus wrote an etiquette book called On Civility in Children. This book became required reading for children throughout Europe for over two centuries.

From a different perspective, the history of “good manners” or “etiquette” can tell a lot about the “bad manners” and the common habits of the people of different ages. For example, making a toast is a tradition that comes from wanting to stay alive. Making a toast, with the clinking of the glasses together, was originally done so that when the glasses clinked, the wine sloshed into each other’s cup on impact. This meant that whatever was in one drink (poison, drugs, aphrodisiacs), was now in both glasses.

In the 17th century, one of the biggest etiquette problems was that men would pick their teeth at the table with the pointed end of these knives. The disgusted Duc de Richelieu had all the knives in his chateau filed. This created the blunt-ended knives we use today.

Covering your mouth when you yawn had two logics to it. The first logic was religious. When you yawned, the Devil could reach right in and yank out your soul. The second reason was that in the Middle Ages, cleanliness was not their golden rule. Bathing was considered unhealthy, so the peasants and nobility stank—badly, and as you can imagine they had flies around them. When you yawned, you had a real chance to swallow one of the many flies.

Why are we told to keep our elbows off the table? Back in the old days, people sat down to dinner all squeezed together in a row down a long table. This meant that each person was packed very tightly and there simply was not much room for maneuvering your arms to eat. Therefore, the elbows were not allowed on the table as a courtesy to others.

Finally, in today’s world, we have a new dining etiquette rule for cellular phones. Why? Because people don’t use common sense in knowing how or when to use them. The new rule is that it is bad etiquette to talk on a cellular phone while having dinner with clients and friends.

Just a Little Bit of Trivia

Would you believe?

•Table etiquette began as a set of rules to prevent violence at the table. In the American style of eating, the knife is placed down at the top of the plate between use to remove any hint of a threat to the other guest at the table.

•The knife was first a weapon, and later evolved as a table utensil. The blade of the dinner knife was made round instead of pointed to stop people from killing each other at the dinner table.

•The fork is a descendant of the pointed stick, which was used for hunting, cooking, and serving. Later it evolved to its present shape and form.

•The spoon was the first utensil used for eating, followed by the knife and then the fork. The spoon was originally designed as a bowl with an arm attached.

•The bowl was invented before the plate. The plate was introduced when the use of knives and forks required a hard surface for the diners to cut their food.

•One hundred years ago in Japan, a man could be executed for eating with bad manners. Today, it could create a disastrous business encounter.

•After Louis XIV’s gardener at Versailles put up signs, or étiquettes to keep the aristocrats from trampling through his gardens, etiquette cards soon evolved and were given to each guest with dining rules on the back.

•Man first ate alone when food was not plentiful. When food became more plentiful, man started including others. When traveling, he always carried his own knife and fork.

•The handshake was first a sign to show your empty hands, presented forward to another person to show them that you weren’t holding a weapon. When the other man extended his own empty hand, it showed that he also was unarmed. Therefore, a handshake meant they were going to talk instead of fight.

•Back in the old days, eating at the dining room table was more like eating in a high school cafeteria. People used to squeeze into a long table that was set into a row. This meant that each person was packed very tightly in between the people on either side, and they simply didn’t have much maneuvering room to eat. The elbows weren’t allowed on the table because if you had an elbow on the table, the only place for it was in the middle of the next person’s plate. It was a courtesy made out of necessity. If someone had their elbows on the table, someone else couldn’t eat.

•There are many things in our lives we take for granted without knowing why. Some things that we did five hundred years ago because they were safety precautions, or physical requirements, are absurd now, but we do them because they’ve been passed down through the years.

Ladies’ Influences on Dining Etiquette

•Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) was the first monarch to use the fork for eating. The custom outraged the clergy, but caught on in the New World.

•Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy changed all the old rules of entertaining and protocol in the United States. She reduced the number of courses to range from three to five, rather than nine to twelve; these courses included a salad, cheeses, and crackers between the entrée and the dessert.

•Jacqueline Kennedy also changed the dining table from a long rectangular table or single horseshoe shaped table to round tables for eight or ten. She used colored cloths, which were unheard of at that time. She put a White House or U.S. Government official at each table as host so they could introduce the guests to each other and make sure the conversation flowed.