The Rituals of Dinner

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The Rituals of Dinner Page 28

by Visser, Margaret


  Power struggles between men and women are frequently expressed through the medium of food. Wives may, subtly or not, raise or lower their cooking standards to express their pleasure; husbands may make it obvious that they appreciate or hate the food offered them. Children too can cause a flurry of parental concern by refusing to “eat properly.” The eating disorder called anorexia (“not stretching forth the hand and taking” in Greek) usually includes love-refusal as part of its original strategy. Fasting is an ancient form of political protest, a way of withdrawing from society in order to think over one’s life, or to demonstrate that one disapproves of what is going on; we have seen how eerie an empty chair can be at a feast.

  Because food is such a powerful metaphor for love, and sharing it such a binding force, refusing to eat is often one of the most wounding insults one can wield. In Nigeria, for example, where anyone visiting must be offered food, a guest’s saying that he has already eaten and wants no more food is interpreted as an expression of great anger on his part. A traveller in Iraq during the thirties described a Bedouin “enemy feast,” where the rage of the guests was displayed by their taking up handfuls of the food, rubbing it over their shut mouths, and dropping it in the dust at their feet. (These men, everybody knew, were famished, which was why they had been invited. Desert hospitality enjoined that hungry people must be fed, even if they were known enemies.) Then, claiming, “We have eaten,” they strode out of the tent, wiping their hands on their clothes or in their hair; contempt could not be more graphically expressed. Where a male holds great power over his womenfolk, he may make his displeasure with the cooking brutally clear: a Pedi husband, for instance, could cause consternation by ploughing his finger through the porridge in his bowl. “With the first offence he will eat some of it,” but there will be serious trouble if it happens again. “Good cooking on the other hand is an accepted fact and will cause no comment.”

  The modern convention is to serve a meal in courses, the dishes being taken round the table by servants on formal occasions so that diners may take what they want; only the obligatory soup is presented already in its plate to a guest. At the usual servantless meal, platters are passed round the table for people to “help themselves.” In this way, the hosts make it clear that they relinquish control over the quantities which guests may eat. Having sized up their own appetites and fitted their portions to them, guests ought to eat everything they themselves have put on their plates. Less formally, the host may rise to his or her feet and place food on the plates for the others, sometimes asking them how much they would like. Portions may be served directly onto the plates and then brought into the dining room, so that there is no choice involved. The obligation to eat what is placed before one then becomes ambiguous: eating everything shows appreciation—but then, the quantity served was not in the guest’s control. Where people eat in the kitchen, as they do more and more commonly nowadays, either they are served from the stove and can state their preference, or they take food from dishes set in the centre. Choice, regarding quantity at least, returns to the serving ritual.

  The word “helping” points to one of the most important kinds of table manners: companions must learn, or be pressured, to notice their neighbours’ needs and supply them where they can. The Abbasids in the ninth century were enjoined to see to it that the people sitting near them lacked for nothing; they were to be encouraged to eat more, and to try dishes they had not yet tasted. All over the world, good manners tend to require that diners should offer food to their neighbours before taking it themselves. The Chinese must offer to pour tea for others every time they top up their own tiny cups; Nigerians should never dip porridge morsels into the relish before they have asked their neighbours to do so first.

  Inferiors may be forbidden to ask for anything at table. It will then be incumbent upon others to demonstrate their superiority by watching out for them, an excellent device (provided that everybody works at it) for bringing lower ranks to the attention of higher at table. We have seen that a man sharing an écuelle with a woman was expected to cut her slices from their common portion, since he was the official wielder of a knife. Helping another with one’s knife without asking their leave was a sign of great condescension. The Court of civill Courtesie (1591) explains: “Item to have an eie to such as sit nere beneath him and cannot reach, and peradventure for good maner (if they be any thing his inferiors) wil not speake; and if they eat not, to aske whether he shall be their Carver. But I would not have him be any mans Carver, without asking him first, except it be to one so much his inferiour, as he knoweth wil be glad of the curtesie he sheweth him, though hee like not the meate. For as to carve to a mans better is presumption, so to ones equal, except by asking first the question …”

  Children, like women, had to be helped, and could not serve themselves; they were also forbidden (at least according to the rules) to ask for anything. The monastic orders which impose silence at meals do so not only to enable the monks to listen to the texts customarily read aloud in the refectory; they are also enforcing the ideals of humility and consideration for others. A monk depends entirely on his neighbours to notice what he needs, to serve him with food and drink, and to pass the salt. A willingness to notice other people is essential to polite behaviour of every kind. A game is sometimes played during meals at summer camps in Canada: someone starts by doing something peculiar, say putting her finger on her nose. As soon as the others notice, they do the same, until only one camper remains oblivious to what is happening and over-absorbed in eating. The others point to him and shout, “Pig!”

  Until the late eighteenth century in Europe, when “covers” were conventionally provided for everyone present, guests often brought their own spoons as well as their knives to dinner. They served themselves from the more liquid dishes with their spoons; the manners books exhort their readers either to wipe them carefully before plunging them into the central bowl, or when the food has been eaten to send them to the buffet to be washed before taking a second helping. Serving spoons began to be supplied first in Italy; they had become common in France by the late seventeenth century, but even then guests were at liberty to bring their own spoons and use them in the common dish. One must not slide food from serving dish to plate, says Branchereau at the end of the nineteenth century; serving implements once provided must be put to use, for dexterous lifting.

  At formal dinners today, no one may take a second helping: dishes are passed but once. The emphasis is on speed and variety. Eating a lot—of one dish, anyway—is not elegant. (This was not the case at dinners à la française, where, just because everything was laid out on view, diners were thought to be especially polite if they ate—repeatedly if they liked—from only one or two of the dishes standing near their seats.) At family meals or dinner with friends, on the other hand, it may be important to the self-esteem of the hosts that guests should eat more than one plate of food. In Denmark, at least some seconds must be accepted, and visitors to Bulgaria are warned to take small portions, because they must eat several of them, and even then, “don’t just nibble.” At an ordinary meal in China, taking more cài or relish is conditional upon there being rice still in one’s bowl—it is rude to “fill up” on cài. It is an ancient rule in Japan never actually to ask for a second helping of anything but rice or soup. In France, a female guest of honour must accept an offer of a second helping, because only if she does so can anyone else have one.

  A host, to show his or her generosity, may urge guests repeatedly to eat. The host wants to give, and acceptance of the food often means a strong though vague obligation incurred by the guest. We have seen that in many cases the host will go so far as not to eat anything himself; but guests in another’s house may not, except for reasons of health, great grief, or an officially declared state of fasting, claim the same prerogative. A game with tremendously complex rules and innuendos may have to be played: Guests will refuse more food; hosts will press them to eat. Ritual might decree that three refusals are req
uired. A host who fails to reiterate his plea can therefore show real malice.

  The Sherpas, Sherry Ortner tells us, are culturally imbued with resistance to receiving anything from others in everyday life; the host’s pressure is necessary, or the reluctance of even the most well-intentioned guests would prevent them from enjoying his party. On the other hand, the host never really knows why his guests are so hard to persuade—are they being hostile, or merely polite?—and he may become genuinely anxious. He must ensure that he wins in the contest of wills, however, or a guest might go away with “an empty mouth”—a condition that ineluctably spells trouble.

  Ritual refusals work only when pressure is also exerted to override them. The British custom is that one should not force food upon people; it is part of the whole elaborate scheme in which one should appear to consider food to be relatively unimportant, and assume that nobody is obsessed with eating. Henry Fielding wrote in the eighteenth century that no host should urge his guests to eat more than once, and that he should never complain that they have no appetite: such importuning, in his opinion, is “sometimes little less than burlesque, and always impertinent and troublesome.” The English still baffle foreigners by the unspokenness of their preferences and resentments, and the extraordinary sensitivity to non-verbal signs which this necessitates in everybody. French visitors intending to stay with families in England are warned by Bernard Gille in 1981 that the first meal eaten with hosts is vital. You absolutely must eat as much that first time as you usually do, even if you are exhausted from the trip—under pain of being underfed for the rest of your stay. For your hostess will watch closely what you eat the first time, and base her estimate of your appetite, when planning subsequent meals, upon that information. He suggests that you might say, “No thank you! Excuse me, I am not very hungry tonight. But I like it very much and I will eat far more tomorrow.” And never, he warns, refuse a second helping if you really want it; your hosts will maddeningly take you at your word.

  In most cultures, however, hosts are expected to go overboard to make their magnanimity felt. Arabs heap guests’ plates with food and beg them to eat (a manners book for foreigners assures us, however, that it is not necessary to consume everything). It is polite also to pour tea into glasses until it slops into the saucer—precisely as Europeans and Americans are taught not to do. The Arab custom continues to express the idea of generosity experienced by the Old Testament Psalmist who rejoices because his “cup runneth over.”

  One of the many legends about Napoleon’s friend the archchancellor and gourmand Cambacérès is that he once provided a magnificent sturgeon for a dinner in honour of the tsar. (An alternative version of this story makes the host Talleyrand and the fish a giant salmon.) The great fish, weighing 162 pounds, was carried round to be viewed before serving, with the accompaniment of a flute and violins (Athenaeus says that sturgeon was always served to music at Roman banquets). Besides the musicians dressed as chefs, there were four footmen bearing torches and two kitchen assistants wearing knives and carrying the sturgeon laid out on leaves and flowers, resting on an eight- to ten-foot ladder; the head porter, ornamental axe in hand, marched at the head of the procession. Guests stood on their chairs to see the fish, correctly overlaying restraint with admiration for this special occasion. When the mighty dish had been borne round the table and was being carried out of the dining room for carving, one of the bearers made a false step, and fell on one knee. The fish slid from its garnished ladder to the floor. The horrified guests struggled to hide their disappointment and embarrassment, cried out in despair, shouted advice about how to save the situation. But Cambacérès, with ancient Roman simplicity and dignity, quietly said, “Serve the other one.” It was even larger (187 pounds) and more splendidly adorned than the first. The intentional accident had served merely to thrill the guests and magnify their host; the first fish had been “sacrificed to honour the second.”

  Guests in many cultures are given food to take home with them. Accepting the rest of one’s portion as a takeaway parcel is apparently the only way to appease an anxious Sherpa host when a guest really cannot eat another thing. We have seen that in ancient Rome guests brought napkins with them, which they filled with food and took home to their uninvited wives and families. Hosts may, as we have mentioned, show their esteem during the meal by passing delicacies to certain guests; the recipient, of course, is absolutely bound to accept and eat. The Li Chi says that if you are fortunate enough, as a guest, to be given a piece of fruit by the ruler, you should suck the kernel clean and put it down the front of your robe, to show that you are not throwing any of his gift away.

  When giving is seen as the first move in a chain of reciprocal obligations, it is a sign of strength. The host, giver of the dinner party, often makes his position clearer still by bestowing food directly upon certain guests. King Menelaos, in Homer’s Odyssey, honours two special guests by giving them the largest and choicest portion, the “fat roasted chine of an ox,” which was his because he was the king. Among Jews and Greeks the host’s gift, selected and presented (however this was done) to a guest singled out by his attention, was thought of as itself a token meal; in Greek it was known as psomis, “the morsel.” Jesus gave Judas “the morsel” at the Last Supper, when the time for the betrayal came. In the Book of Genesis, Joseph, a prince in Egypt, sent food from his solitary high table to where the visiting Hebrews were sitting at dinner; he ordered five times as much to be given to his brother Benjamin as to anyone else. Xenophon describes how the magnanimous Thracian Prince Seuthes “would take the loaves lying in front of him, break them into small pieces, and toss them to whom he liked; the meat likewise, leaving only enough to taste for himself.” Then the other diners were expected to follow suit.

  Modern Western custom is, of course, for each person to control his or her own “place” and portion, and to show politeness by not impinging on others. Sequence may be hierarchical, but substance never—except insofar as the best pieces may be taken by those first in line. We must watch for anything we can offer our companions, pass what they need, ask if we may fill their glasses—but giving them a piece of our portion and expecting them to eat it seems to us either importunate or a sign of favouritism. We are expected, while at table, to treat everyone with equal benevolence, and not to single anyone out even in conversation, let alone in the matter of servings and slices. The rule is that food may go from serving dish to plate and thence back to the kitchen—but not from plate to plate: there must be no crossing over the boundaries laid out on the table by means of the cutlery. A feeling of dismay or even disgust (hastily thrust out of sight, of course) may arise at being presented with something from another’s plate, and probably transported by means of another’s cutlery. It follows that breaking the rule, by giving someone a piece of food from our plate or receiving one with pleasure, is a sign of intimacy. In India, where the “apartness” of diners is upheld by pollution avoidances, such an act would be unthinkable except between mother and child.

  CARVING

  Before 1500, the Indians of South Dakota depended for their meat meals mostly on bison and antelope, which the men would hunt and kill, or drag from the rivers in winter when animals fell through the ice and drowned. Hunting usually took place a long way from the home base, mostly in order to avoid packs of dogs and wolves which lived at the edges of human territory, scavenging and hoping to share the results of the hunt. Having obtained the prize of a large animal, the Indian band would have to transport it very quickly home over a considerable distance; as meat became high, dogs, wolves, and bears would be drawn to it by the smell.

  In order for the men to move quickly, the burden had first to be lightened. Archaeologists have found heaps of bones at the sites of Indian villages, and worked out which parts of the beasts were customarily left behind at the hunt-site. These included: the heavy heads (though muzzles were cut off and taken home to become ingredients in stews and soups, and one jaw, the lower, probably with the tongue attache
d, was often brought back); the vertebrae; the pelvis; and the rather meatless lower limbs. It is known from early ethnographic descriptions that the butchered meat would probably have been cut in great hunks and piled into one half of the split hide and covered by the other half. Some of the bones were transported back for extracting the marrow, for use as hoe-blades and hide-scrapers, and for pounding into small pieces and boiling down to produce bone-butter. A few bones and meat scraps were carried back to be fed to domesticated dogs. The more careful carving, and the dividing of the meat among the village inhabitants, would be the women’s job after the meat had arrived safely home.

  But before the animal was hauled back, the men must have feasted on its inner parts, the brains, heart, liver, kidneys, and sometimes the tongue; these portions would go “off” quickly and tasted best when absolutely fresh. This was the hunters’ prerogative. Hunters were mostly male, though some women might also have taken part in catching and carrying prey. Eating the innards together was an immediate and handsome reward for the group’s success.

 

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