Staple comfort food, spaghetti sometimes defeats even skilled diners with its ability to fling tag ends and bits of sauce everywhere. January 4 being National Spaghetti Day, Etiquetteer was irresistibly reminded of the difficulty a course of “maccaroni” had for the English ladies in Elizabeth von Armin’s charming novel Enchanted April. “[Mrs. Fisher] found it difficult to eat—slippery, wriggling off her fork, making her look, she felt, undignified when, having got it as she supposed into her mouth, ends of it yet hung out.” Out of frustration she then commits the cardinal sin of cutting it bite-sized with a knife. “She was aware that knives in this connection were improper, but one did finally lose patience.”
When she saw her housemate Lottie confronting her pasta, “The word shovel crossed Mrs. Fisher’s mind in connection with Mrs. Wilkins’s actions at that moment.” And so you see the impact that our table manners have on our fellow diners.
Your most important weapon when battling a dish of spaghetti is not your fork, but your patience. Yes, it sometimes takes skill to twirl only a few strands of pasta around your fork and not half the bowl, but it’s worth the wait, and your skill will improve with practice. Yes, you may use a large spoon to help you out, bracing the fork tines in its bowl while you twirl the pasta. But this is still considered amateur according to purists, according to Letitia Baldrige, and “you will feel a great sense of achievement once you master the fork-only method of eating spaghetti.”*
In Enchanted April, Mrs. Fisher recalled Browning’s adeptness with “maccaroni” from watching him eat as a child. “Fascinating the way it went in. No chasing around the plate, no slidings off the fork, no subsequent protrusions of loose ends—just one dig, one whisk, one thrust, one gulp, and lo, yet another poet had been nourished.” That is the sort of confidence that comes from practice. And Etiquetteer knows you are up to the challenge.
Otherwise, just order the farfalle.
*New Manners for New Times: A Complete Guide to Etiquette, by Letitia Baldrige (2003).