FINGER-LICKIN’ GOOD
By Fredric A. Press
Apropos of
nothing in particular, do you or don’t you eat your asparagus with your
fingers? Over the weekend, my wife and I
had two separate occasions to discuss the weighty topic of the etiquette of
eating asparagus with your fingers. While the consensus was "only when
it's a crudité," as is often the case, the consensus was wrong! According
to Miss Manners (and lots of others if you Google the question) asparagus is
correctly eaten with the fingers.
Miss Manners tells that it’s so:
DEAR MISS MANNERS:
The other night at the dinner table, my eight-year-old son started to eat his
asparagus with his fingers. When I brought this to his attention, my wife
informed me that it is considered good manners to eat this with the fingers.
Good etiquette tells me you don't use the fingers for this vegetable.
GENTLE READER:
Miss Manners tells you that you do. Asparagus is, indeed, correctly eaten with
the fingers, in a very old tradition of which few modern people seem aware.
Those who do know can have a marvelous time doing this in company or in
restaurants and being reprimanded or at least stared at, only to have the
disapproving people find out later that they were in the wrong. What Miss
Manners wonders is how an eight-year-old boy found out about this. Would he
like to meet a refined Victorian lady?
But, as Emily Post pointed out back in 1922:
Although asparagus may be taken in the fingers, don’t take a long drooping
stalk, hold it up in the air and catch the end of it in your mouth like a fish.
Also, using fingers is a “no no” if the asparagus is sauced or dripping with
butter or cooked to death so that it resembles a limp...oh, never mind.
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