Do you see the recurring small-and-slow pattern here? Class-indicator rules are not about eating with any degree of ease, speed, efficiency or practicality. Quite the opposite: they are designed to slow us down, to make things deliberately difficult, to ensure that we eat the smallest possible mouthfuls in the most time-consuming, laborious manner. Now that we've identified the pattern and the principle behind it, the purpose becomes clear. What it all boils down to is not appearing to be greedy, and, more specifically, not appearing to give food too high a priority. Greed of any sort is a breach of the all-important fair-play rule. Letting one's desire for food take priority over making conversation with one's companions involves giving physical pleasure or gratification a higher value than words. In polite society, this is frowned upon as un-English and highly embarrassing. Over-eagerness about anything is undignified; over-eagerness about food is disgusting and even somehow faintly obscene. Eating small mouthfuls, with plenty of pauses in between them, shows a more restrained, unemotional, English approach to food.
Napkin Rings and Other Horrors
Napkins are useful and versatile objects - as class indicators, that is. We have already seen that to call them 'serviettes' is a grave social solecism - one of the 'seven deadly sins' unmistakably signalling lower-class origins. But there are many other ways in which napkins can set off English class-radar bleepers, including, in chronological order from the beginning to the end of a meaclass="underline"
* setting the table with napkins folded into over-elaborate, origami-like shapes ('smart' people just fold them simply);
* standing folded napkins upright in glasses (they should be placed either on or next to the plates);
* tucking one's napkin into waistband or collar (it should be left loose on the lap);
* using one's napkin to scrub or wipe vigorously at one's mouth (gentle dabbing is correct);
* folding one's napkin up carefully at the end of the meal (it should be left carelessly crumpled on the table);
* or, even worse, putting rolled-up napkins into napkin rings (only people who say 'serviette' use napkin rings).
The first two of these napkin-sins are based on the principle that over-fussy, 'genteel' daintiness is a lower-middle-class trait. Inelegant use of the napkin - tucking and scrubbing - is working class. The last two napkin-sins are abhorrent because they indicate that the napkins will be used again without being washed. Smart people would rather be given a paper napkin than a used cotton or linen one. The upper-middle classes joke about 'the sort of people who use napkin rings' - meaning lower/middle-middles who think they are being elegant and dainty, but are in fact being rather grubby.
While there is some point to these napkin rules (at least, the objection to re-using napkins strikes me as perfectly reasonable), the prejudice against fish knives is harder to justify. At one time, quite a number of middle-class and even upper-class English people used special knives (and forks) for eating fish. Some may have regarded this practice as a bit over-dainty and pretentious, but the outright taboo seems to date from the publication of John Betjeman's 'How to Get On in Society', in which he lampoons the affectations and pretensions of a lower-middle-class housewife preparing for a dinner party. The poem begins:
Phone for the fish knives, Norman
For cook is a little unnerved
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served
Fish knives, possibly always a bit suspect, were from that moment irrevocably associated with people who say 'pardon' and 'serviette' and 'toilet' - and use napkin rings. Now, fish knives are also seen as hopelessly old-fashioned, and are probably only used by lower/middle-middle people of older generations. Steak knives are regarded as equally suburban, as are doilies, pastry-forks, anything gold, salt-and-pepper 'cruets', coasters and hostess trolleys (hotplates on a sort of wheeled table, used for keeping food warm in the dining room).
You would have thought that finger bowls - little bowls of tepid water for washing your fingers when eating food by hand - would come into the same category of precious, twee, affected, suburban daintiness, but for some reason they are acceptable, and are still seen at upper-middle and upper-class dinners. There is very little logic to any of this. Tales are often told of ignorant lower-class guests drinking from finger bowls - and of ultra-polite hosts then drinking from the bowls themselves, so as not to embarrass the guests by drawing attention to their error. You are supposed to dip your fingers briefly in the finger bowl, then pat them gently dry with your napkin - not wash and scrub and rub as though it were a bathroom sink, unless you want to activate your hosts' class-radar systems.
Port-passing Rules
Another way you can set off English class-radar bleepers is to pass the port the wrong way. Port is served at the end of a dinner - sometimes, among the upper classes, to men only, as the women follow the old-fashioned practice of 'withdrawing' to another room to drink coffee and talk girl-talk, leaving the men to their male bonding. Port must always travel round the table clockwise (if it were to go anti-clockwise, the world would end), so you must always pass the bottle or decanter to your left.
Even if you somehow miss your turn, you must never ask for the port to be passed back to you, as this would mean port travelling in the wrong direction, which would be a disaster. Either wait for it come all the way round again, or pass your glass along to the left to catch up with the port and be filled for you. Your glass can then be passed back to you without danger, as port can travel anti-clockwise if it is in a glass: the taboo on passing to the right only applies to port in bottles and decanters.
No-one has the slightest idea why clockwise port-passing is so important. The rule serves no discernible purpose, other than to cause embarrassment to those who are not aware of it, and, presumably, a peculiarly English sense of smug self-satisfaction among those who are.
THE MEANING OF CHIPS
The SIRC research report on The Meaning of Chips dealt with a food issue of great national importance. Ninety percent of us are chip eaters, the majority indulging at least once a week, and the chip is a vital part of English heritage, but little was known, until the SIRC study, about our relationship with the chip, its role in our social interactions, and its place in the cultural Zeitgeist.
Chips, Patriotism and English Empiricism
Although chips were invented in Belgium, and are popular (as French-fries, frites, patate frite, patatas fritas, etc.) in many other parts of the world, we found that English people tend to think of them as British or, rather more specifically, English. 'Fish and chips' is still regarded as the English national dish. The English are not normally inclined to be either patriotic or passionate about food but we found that they could be surprisingly patriotic and enthusiastic about the humble chip.
'The chip is down to earth,' explained one of our focus-group participants. 'It's basic, it's simple in a good way, which is why we like the chip. We have that quality and it's a good quality... This is what we are - no faffing about.' It hadn't occurred to me that a chunk of fried potato could so eloquently express the earthy empiricism and no-nonsense realism that I had tentatively identified as defining characteristics of Englishness, so I was grateful to him for this insight.
Chip-sharing Rules and Sociability
Chips are also an important social facilitator. This is the only English food that actually lends itself to sharing, and that the unwritten rules allow us to share. When we are eating chips, you will often see the English behaving in a very sociable, intimate, un-English manner: all pitching in messily to eat with our fingers off the same plate or out of the same bag, pinching chips off each other's plates - and even feeding chips to each other. Normally, even with foods that are supposed to be shared, such as Chinese or Indian, the English stick to the practice of each person ordering his or her own dish. But chips seem to promote sociability, which for many English people is part of their attraction - perhaps because we have a greater need than other nations for props and facilitators that encourage 'commensality'.