laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (12/06/83)
The Americans and the English eat dinner differently. Americans tend to serve dinner already cut up into tiny bits and tend to slice their meat into lots of pieces. Then they don't need their knives any more, so they put their knives down, and transfer their fork to their right hand, and start packing it away. But people who were raised in the English tradition of food eating (credentials -- I was living in England as a child) get told that you cut one piece and then eat it, and then cut the next piece. Thus English eaters need to have their knife all through their meal. This is related to the phenomenon of "hacking your dinner roll open and smearing it with butter and jam" rather than breaking off a piece and then applying a dab of butter and jam. (If you haven't tried it this way, **do!** -- it tastes *much* better!) The other great difference is that Americans (and Canadians) tend to eat a bite of this, and then a bit of that, while it is in the English tradition to put a bit of meat on the fork, and then a bit of veg, and then s bit of gravy and then take the bite. This is called "mixing the full flavour of the dinner". Personally, i think that this is a euphamism for "playing with one's food". I have nothing against playing with food, but I think that if you are going to mix it all together you might as well have made a porridge and handed out the spoons. I would rather eat with chopsticks, in any case. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
walsh@ihuxi.UUCP (B. Walsh) (12/06/83)
You must have eaten with some unruly Americans, because I was always brought up that it is improper to cut all your meat up first, and that it is improper to cut open dinner rolls (rather than breaking apart). I've seen very few people cut up their meat first. But, the part about eating different sections is true: first some meat, then some potato, then some veggie, etc. B. Walsh
tll@druxu.UUCP (Laidig) (12/06/83)
Laura makes the statement that Americans cut up their food into little pieces first, then (having no further use for a knife) start eating. I have heard similar statements from several sources at various times, but I have NOT seen this done in practise. I was born and raised in New Jersey (Anyone who says anything about "Nuh Joisey" will be kicked soundly in the teeth :-). Until I left NJ, I had never heard that mispronunciation.), went to college in upstate New York, lived in the San Francisco area for a year, and have now lived in Colorado for 4 years. I have also travelled extensively in this country. I have OCCASIONALLY seen someone cut everything first, then eat it, but this practise seems universally to be frowned upon as poor ettiquette. Will someone tell me where people really eat this way? Tom Laidig AT&T Information Systems Laboratories ...!ihnp4!druxu!tll
kwmc@hou5d.UUCP (K. W. M. Cochran) (12/06/83)
Also .... why do american restaurants not supply one with enough knives, forks spoons etc (CUTLERY NOT SILVERWARE) ? I think it is disgusting for a waiter/waitress to lift my used fork off my salad plate and put it back on the table so that I must use it again for the main course. Ken Cochran hou5d!kwmc
fmc@pyuxqq.UUCP (12/06/83)
WHY is it considered poor ettiquette to cut ALL your meat before eating? I thought the rules of ettiquette were basically to avoid offending other people (e.g. don't pick your nose at the table, etc). What difference can it make to other people if you cut 1 or 12 slices of meat at once? ihnp4!pyuxqq!fmc
walsh@ihuxi.UUCP (12/07/83)
FMC asks "Why is it considered poor etiquette to cut all your meat before eating?". Good question. Why is it considered poor etiquette to put your elbows on the table, to tuck your napkin in your collar, eat peas with a knife, etc., etc.? These things should not offend anyone else, either. I guess it's because eating is such an important and social act that rules were made for it and not all of them make sense, but then a lot of etiquette rules seem meaningless. They just bring order to things, and set standards for the way things should be done so there's no question. Does anyone know how some of these rules got started? Did ol' Amy Vanderbilt or Emily Post make them all up? B. Walsh
wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (12/07/83)
I don't really know how many of the social rules were stared, however, I suspect they came about through the early courts of noblemen and were picked up by the masses in order to emulate their masters. There was one quaint social custom that was promoted during the last century and that was if a gentleman was seated when a lady entered the room and he rose to give her his seat, he was to engage the lady in conversation and keep her standing until the seat he had occupied had cooled.
markp@azure.UUCP (Mark Paulin) (12/07/83)
One good reason not to cut up all of one's meat before eating any of it is that the meat will cool MUCH faster if this is done. Of course the effect is more pronounced if one eats "a bit of this, a bit of that" than if one shovels all the meat in right away. The same could probably be said of dinner rolls. Incidentally, I have read that the British tend to keep their homes a good deal colder than we here in the States do. Obviously one's meat will cool faster in a cooler room... Still, I don't know of anyone who does all the cutting first. My parents discouraged this practice. As a child I ate all of each item before proceeding to the next, but as I grew up I became a "bite-of-each" eater. I have yet to see someone mix their foods *in* each bite (i.e. on their fork). Finally, many American restaurants do indeed provide ample cutlery for one's separate courses (you know, three forks, two spoons, one butter and one steak knife, et cetera) but, sadly, many do not. From the comfy chair of: Mark Paulin ...tektronix!tekmdp!markp
snafu@ihuxi.UUCP (12/08/83)
I always thought the object of dinner was to get the food into your
stomach. I find it rather amusing to watch people argue over the
"propper" way to eat. Don't you realise that the rules you all seem
willing to defend to the death are arbitrarily chosen? Can anyone who
has commented so far give any concrete, reasonable reasons why their
rules are the "right" ones? Please post to the net - let everyone
enjoy!
--
D. Wallis
ihnp4!ihuxi!snafu
AT&T Western Electric, Naperville Il.
(312) 979-5894neal@denelcor.UUCP (Neal Weidenhofer) (12/08/83)
************************************************************************** >FMC asks "Why is it considered poor etiquette to cut all your meat before >eating?". Good question. Why is it considered poor etiquette to put your >elbows on the table, to tuck your napkin in your collar, eat peas with a >knife, etc., etc.? These things should not offend anyone else, either. >I guess it's because eating is such an important and social act that >rules were made for it and not all of them make sense, but then a lot >of etiquette rules seem meaningless. They just bring order to things, >and set standards for the way things should be done so there's no question. >Does anyone know how some of these rules got started? Did ol' Amy Vanderbilt >or Emily Post make them all up? I'm probably a bit old fashioned, but these rules don't seem all that arbitrary to me. Eating IS an important and social act and most of these rules reflect that in some way, for example: Cutting all your meat before eating reflects unseemly haste to finish the meal (and by implication, the social interaction). Putting your elbows on the table is pretty defensive and distancing body language. Look around you sometime at lunch with reasonably polite (even if not necessarily formal) company--the rule AS STATED is violated often but not in such a way that the person's arm is obviously between him and the people he is with. Tucking your napkin in your collar is probably more juvenile than actively offensive. Etc., etc. Regards, Neal Weidenhofer Denelcor, Inc. <hao|csu-cs|brl-bmd>!denelcor!neal
rfg@hound.UUCP (12/08/83)
I would not be surprised to find that (as with many dietary laws) there are practical considerations at the root of many "manners" e.g., cutting up meat: In big pieces, or still on the bone, meat retains heat much longer than when cut up into small pieces. English homes, on average, are colder than U.S. Hence, we cut up a small amount ahead, they cut it one bite at a time. Elbows on tables raise the frequency of spilled glasses. With napkins on necks, one needn't have adult accuracy to keep cleaning bills down. Napkins in laps say,"I am proficient in these adult eating skills." Logical or simply rationalizations? Perhaps both. hound!rfg
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (12/09/83)
I have come to the conclusion that the reason I think that Americans eat messily, is that they are relatives and that everyone eats messier at home. This will not explain the people from Buffalo who asked me why I was 'eating funny' in a restaurant there, though... Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
akp@isrnix.UUCP (12/15/83)
#R:utcsstat:-152000:isrnix:9700002:000:1223 isrnix!akp Dec 8 19:56:00 1983 The idea of cutting all your food up at once, then diving in, might have its roots in the fact that you must do this for children, or go mad. The parent will cut up all of the child's ham, or steak, or whatever, so s/he need not be bothered by it every ten seconds. In my house, that was done, but it was made clear that when we small ones became "real people", we were not to do that. I have also heard of THREE schools of dinner-roll eaters. In the first, and probably the most crass, you slice or break the roll in two, slap butter or jam (never jam at dinner!) on both sides, and be done with it. Case two: you cut or break the roll in two, but only garnish one bite at a time, from the reserve of garnish that you put on your plate when it was passed to you. Then the third school, where you break off one piece at a time and garnish it as a fragment. All this seems perfectly silly; you should be able to eat however you like, as long as it is not offensive. But remember: the upper class in England used all sorts of manners to seperate themselves from the lower classes, including dress, headwear, speech, and, of course, eating. ...and so it goes. -- Allan Pratt ...decvax!ihnp4!iuvax!isrnix!akp
donn@hp-dcd.UUCP (12/16/83)
#R:utcsstat:-152000:hp-dcd:17300004:000:560 hp-dcd!donn Dec 12 11:17:00 1983 The version I heard of the reason for putting knives down was that knives were hard to come by on the frontier, and that often there was only one per family. I vaguely remember this referred to the time around the revolution when Kentucky was the frontier. It would then be polite (if a bit unsanitary) to put down the knife (and switch hands) if you were stopping someone else from eating. (I have this mental image of a family sitting around the table with Jim Bowie's knife stuck in the tabletop when no-one was using it!) Donn Terry hplabs!hp-dcd!donn
filed01@abnjh.UUCP (H. Silbiger) (12/20/83)
The reason the English put several kinds of food on their fork at once, as reported by Laura Creighton, is that after the English get through cooking their food, it's hard to tell the meat from the vegetables. Herman Silbiger AT&T-IS Morristown