Plate Removed When Fork Is Laid Down

Once upon a time it was actually considered impolite to remove a single plate until the last guest at the table had finished eating!  In other days people evidently did not mind looking at their own dirty plates indefinitely, nor could they have minded sitting for hours at table.  Good service to-day requires the removal of each plate as soon as the fork is laid upon it; so that by the time the last fork is put down, the entire table is set with clean plates and is ready for the next course.

=DOUBLE SERVICE AND THE ORDER OF TABLE PRECEDENCE=

At every well-ordered dinner, there should be a double service for ten or twelve persons; that is, no hot dish should, if avoidable, be presented to more than six, or nine at the outside.  At a dinner of twelve, for instance, two dishes each holding six portions, are garnished exactly alike and presented at opposite ends of the table.  One to the lady on the right of the host, and the other to the lady at the opposite end of the table.  The services continue around to the right, but occasional butlers direct that after serving the “lady of honor” on the right of the host, the host is skipped and the dish presented to the lady on his left, after which the dish continues around the table to the left, to ladies and gentlemen as they come.  In this event the second service starts opposite the lady of honor and also skips the first gentleman, after which it goes around the table to the left, skips the lady of honor and ends with the host.  The first service when it reaches the other end of the table skips the lady who was first served and ends with the gentleman who was skipped.

It is perhaps more polite to the ladies to give them preference, but it is complicated, and leaves another gentleman as well as the host, sitting between two ladies who are eating while he is apparently forgotten.  The object (which is to prevent the lady who is second in precedence from being served last) can be accomplished by beginning the first service from the lady on the right of the host and continuing on the right 6 places; the second service begins with the lady on the left of the host and continues on the left five places, and then comes back to the host.  The best way of all, perhaps, is to vary the “honor” by serving the entree and salad courses first to the lady on the left instead of to the lady on the right and continue the service of these two courses to the left.

A dinner of eighteen has sometimes two services, but if very perfect, three.  Where there are three services they start with the lady of honor and the sixth from her on either side and continue to the right.

=FILLING GLASSES=

As soon as the guests are seated and the first course put in front of them, the butler goes from guest to guest on the right hand side of each, and asks “Apollinaris or plain water!” and fills the goblet accordingly.  In the same way he asks later before pouring wine:  “Cider, sir?” “Grape fruit cup, madam?” Or in a house which has the remains of a cellar, “Champagne?” or “Do you care for whiskey and soda, sir?”