Sausage at an “At Home” (and Other Faux Pas)

You may not have known this, but there are a few things you shouldn’t do if you are “Well Bred,” according to the Boston Herald-Traveler’s Home-Maker’s Guide (1929).

Please, please, well bred readers! Never:

Serve sausage at an “At Home.” [This is my favorite do-not...It just makes me laugh!]

Fill in a blank invitation with printing. [Just as long as i don't make happy faces for dots over the 'i's, I think we'll be OK]

Have meat sandwiches, waffles and doughnuts for afternoon tea. [Uh oh...how did they know?]

Use pink paper for invitations to pink teas. [But I think that would be kind of - cute, actually, don't you?]

Call a butter knife a butter spreader. [The horror!]

Have an untidy maid. [I don't think this is going to be an issue, unless we count me as the maid, in which case, pretend we didn't see my desk, all right?]

Have your food passed from the right. [I wouldn't worry too much about this - especially if the maid is untidy, that will be the least of our problems.]

Be greedy. [I can see the people who have the meat sandwiches, doughnuts and waffles having a teeny problem with this one.]

Stuff. [This sort of goes with the above. Unless I am being greedy secretly. Like once when I was at a fancy bash, they had really good gold-wrapped chocolate mints, and we went around at the end of the party picking up the ones people had left in the baskets on the tables...I guess this was not well-bred. However: did not stuff, except gold-wrapped mints into handbag.]

Acknowledge an invitation to a church wedding when you are not invited to the reception. [A dilemma: won't it be, oh, kind of rude not to acknowledge the invitation? Is this some sort of polite revenge for not getting a meal and a party out of it? Do not understand this.]

Take off your hat at a formal tea. [Or ever, if you are outside! Not ever! I remember even in the 1960s women, and men for that matter - all with hats, gloves, all dressed up in fancy schmancy clothes, just walking down to the drugstore! So for a formal tea, you had better solder that hat on, ladies]

Make a formal call at two-thirty. [They don't tell you the polite time though. However, I looked in another book from 1954 and it said that you visit between 3 and 5, so there you go. Just find something else to do for half an hour, like buying non-pink invitations.] 

Borrow all your host’s clothes because you forgot your own on a visit. [All of them? What about some of them, can I borrow some of them? And what sort of visit is this, anyway? Never mind, I don't want to know. ]

The lovely photographs are from Sarah Field Splint’s The Art of Cooking and Serving (1928), a thoroughly delightful little book. The maid on the left (the one with a hand on her hip, smirking very slightly) has the same expression I usually wear when asked if there is anything new to eat tonight. Maybe I’ll serve up some waffles and doughnuts, that’s new! Sort of.

Coming soon: what to DO to be well-bred. Also: what well-bred children are like. And some 1920s household hints, too.

Gingerbread Jewels

Even spicy Betty Crocker, she of the gingerbread mix, must know that really - honestly - this does not require “easy directions on the package.” I think we just need to look at the picture. Dab on some whipped cream (or Cool Whip, really - that would fit in with the general scheme nicely), and then dab on the strawberry jam. I could do that!

And such a fancy name, too. The jewel part being the jam. And the gingerbread being the, um, gingerbread. Got it.