h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Things I was told as I grew up in Scotland.

"All joints on the table will be carved" so keep your elbows off, at least until the feeding has ended.
Napkin in your lap and you ought to use it before sipping your wine, or you leave food on the glass.
To remove something from your mouth, use the napkin.
Smoking is a no no until after dinner and, if at a formal do, after toasting the Queen.
Port goes to the left.
When presented with a lot of cutlery, start from the outside and work your way in.
If you have to tip your soupbowl to get at the dregs, tip away from you to avoid spilling it towards yourself.
Never start until everyone has a plateful in front of them, especially if you have been served first in a restaurant.

The soup thing - tipping the bowl away from you - apparently the correct way to eat your breakfast cereal is to tip the bowl towards you....
My nan shouted at me once when I was 4 for blowing my nose on the napkin "In this house we use tissues, DARLING"..... absolutely traumatizing!

Another thing about soup - you have to dip the spoon into the soup with an action that takes it away from you rather than towards you.

my (german) mother taught me to leave the cuttlery on the plate in the right order after finishin the meal: forming an opposite V (standing on its head. Like an A without..well, you know what I mean) to indicate that I am still hungry; and forming a line across the plate as the arms of a clock showing "5 minutes to 5" to indicate I had enough.

Am I right in thinking that it is (or used to be) considered rude in Germany to use ones knife to cut ones potatoes, and that one should rather use ones fork?

Being German I have never heard about that one, though it makes sense to me to cut the ready-boiled potatoes with ones fork, as they are easy to cut anyway (well, if you're holding the forkin your righthand that is) (could be that I am rationalising my cultural specialities -I caught me doing that more than once before ).

As my aristocrat friends tell me, the thing on potatoes is correct - in fact, everything that can be cut with one's fork should be (like dumplings, pies,...whatever.) However, this has become obsolete since a few years, as the Knigge, the German authority for etiquette, doesn't mention it anymore.

Hi - I mention potatoes and knives elsewhere in the forum. In fact this forum is too bitty for words. When I was au pairing 20 years ago I got told off for cutting my potatoes with a knife. It was just one of those things you just don't do and offended my host to his bone marrow. As this generation is still alive and paying for the meals to some extent, I wouldn't be to knife- happy when there are potatoes around in Germany, but respect peoples' sensitive sympathy for the potatoes.

In England, too, it was/is very rude/unlucky to put shoes on the table (although that probably applies more outside mealtimes) and to sing at the table. And to whistle.... but that should be obvious, just imagine all the crumbs.

As to directions of spoons, I mentioned that in the other thread, too, with the hard and fast rule that savoury food is scooped away from you and sweet towards you, which would reinforce what it said here.

I know I'm a bit behind, but...
If you tip a soup bowl away from you so that you don't spill it on yourself doesn't that mean you'll spill it over everyone else at the table?
Doesn't sound very polite to me!

I'm not sure if this is true, or even too sure where it's supposed to be true, but I think that if on your last day, your hosts in whichever country it is (could be Germany, could be Denmark, could be Holland I'm thinking of) serve you carrots, they don't really want you to come back. Is this possibly true?

That sounds a bit far-fetched, but then cultures that one would think are not too different do have some strange ideas. (Sorry all Danes) In Iceland for example, we were told it was considered rude to give your host a gift when staying with them. I can't reconstruct the thinking behind this, but it is similar to the insult in China if you eat all you are put on your plate, which indicates to the host that he hasn't provided enough food. On the other hand, someone could explain to the Chinese that we are told "eat everything up, there are poor starving children in Asia who don't have anything" - a logic that never convinced any child to eat their cabbage.