Everyone should have an understanding of the rules of etiquette. They entered our life many centuries ago, since then they have been repeatedly supplemented and changed. It is especially important to look decent with meals. For example, how to eat soup? It does not matter if this happens in a solemn or everyday setting. Knowing some of the nuances will save you from mistakes and help to leave a good impression about yourself.
How to serve
How to eat etiquette soup? First you need to learn the basics of table setting. This dish is usually served in special tureens with a rug. This allows you to provide food to everyone at once, rather than pouring soup on plates in the kitchen, and then carry it into the living room, spilling along the road.
Tureen is placed in the center of the table. Nearby are snacks and supplements that match the specific dish. This is bread or pita bread, pie or pies, sauce, mustard, sour cream, greens. Each bowl should have a spoon. All guests must be provided with a large spoon and two plates - deep and flat. A flat plate is placed under the deep so as not to stain the tablecloth with food.
When pouring soup, do not completely fill the plate. Otherwise, eating will be inconvenient. Filling it in two-thirds is enough. If desired, each guest can take himself another.
How to eat soup: general recommendations
Serving this dish is important. But it’s even more important to learn how to taste it. How to eat soup? The general rules below will help you avoid mistakes:
- Maintaining posture is necessary. You can’t hunch over, bend low over the plate.
- The spoon should be brought to the mouth gently. It is strictly forbidden to reach for her whole body and lips.
- Do not artificially cool the dish. According to etiquette, it is not allowed to intensively mix the soup, blow on a spoon. A person can not only get dirty, but also spray the clothes of neighbors. Finally, it looks ugly.
- You can’t sort out the small ingredients in the soup, try to fish out the most delicious pieces and put off “unloved” foods. This not only deprives others of appetite, but also offends the hostess.
The subtleties of the process
How to eat soup with a spoon? What can and cannot be done?
- You can’t pull a full spoon to your mouth. You need to scoop as much as you can swallow at a time.
- No sound is allowed during swallowing. This is done silently.
- If the soup is thick, you need to bring the spoon to the lips with the front edge. If liquid, then the side.
- Putting the cutlery on the table is prohibited. It must be left on the plate after the meal.
- After eating, you should not move the plate away from you, it's a bad form.
Transparent and filling soups
What are soups and how to eat them? The dish can be transparent or refueling. The first category includes broth with or without additives. Serve it should be in the broth often, which has one or two handles. Surely it is worth offering guests also chopped greens. Etiquette rules say that there is always a clear soup with additives in a spoon. A broth without additives should be drunk like tea or juice from a cup.
Refueling soups are borsch, pickles, solyanka. They are cooked with cereals and vegetables. Many solid ingredients imply that eating such a soup should be followed by a spoon.
Hot soups
Suitable temperature for serving such dishes is from 75 degrees. If it seems too hot, you need to wait for it to cool and only then try. How to eat soup and serve it? Transparent broths with additives are offered to guests in deep plates and soup bowls. The broth cup on the table unfold the handle to the left. Transparent soup without additives should be sipped from a special cup.
Hot gas stations are served in deep plates. Separately offered croutons, herbs, sour cream. Guests must add these ingredients to their taste from a common bowl. To pickles, cabbage soup and borscht you should definitely make pies, pies, donuts. Such additions should be on the left on the patty plate. They must be eaten with hands.
Cold soups
For cold dishes, there are also rules of etiquette. Beetroot, okroshka and so on belong to this category. It is customary to cook them in the spring and summer. They are needed to cool, stock up on vitamins.
In addition to summer soups made from vegetables and other products, pieces of edible ice should be offered. With their help, you can further cool the dish. For applying ice serve special forceps. Cold soups are served in deep plates or soup bowls.
Mashed soups
They should be distinguished in a separate category. How to eat soup, what to offer in addition to it? Such dishes are served in a broth bowl or a special cup. A spoon is required if the soup has solid additives. It can be slices of mushrooms or vegetables, crackers, cracklings and so on. It is also used if there are two handles in a dish.
Separately, in a gravy boat you need to offer cream or sour cream. Supplements are put on a plate to taste, be sure to mix with a spoon.
Useful Tips
It is necessary to remember a few more rules and subtleties.
- Soup must be poured with a common ladle, which is attached to the tureen. Etiquette rules require the hostess to do this. In a restaurant, this duty is assigned to the waiter.
- Plates with dressing soups must be placed on small dining rooms.
- The handle of the spoon etiquette orders to clamp between the thumb and forefinger. The beginning of the handle should lie on the middle finger, and the end should be on the basis of the index finger. Only a small child can take a spoon into his fist and not be branded an ill-mannered person. The thumb serves to press the handle to the middle finger from above. On the side it should be held index.
- The spoon is carefully and slowly immersed in liquid. It is not recommended to release the cutlery from your hands until the dish is finished. If you need to mix the soup with a spoon, it is enough to make one or two non-energetic turns.
- How to tilt a bowl of soup? If a person is in an informal setting, he is allowed to do so. The plate must be carefully tilted away from you. At celebrations this is forbidden by etiquette. It is better to leave a little liquid at the bottom of the plate, if it can no longer be scooped up with a spoon.
What to do with bread
Soup is often eaten with bread. How to do it right? It is strictly forbidden to cut it at the table, this is a gross violation of etiquette. From a slice on weight, it is also not recommended to bite off.
Bread should be put on a patty plate. Then, small pieces can be broken off from it. They are brought to the mouth with hands.
Gross mistakes
What mistakes are considered the most egregious? How is it impossible to eat soup?
- It is forbidden to blow on a dish so that it cools down. Instead, you have to wait until it stops being too hot.
- Beautiful posture in the rules of etiquette attaches great importance. You can not bend over a plate, reach for a spoon.
- Putting the cutlery should be on the plate, not on the table. And you can do this only when the soup is over.
- Gathering a full spoon is bad form. This amount cannot be swallowed immediately. There is also a danger of spilling your soup on neighbors.
- Tipping the plate is not recommended. Eating everything to the end is not necessary at all. In addition, there is a chance to douse the contents of the plate.