Carving for Ladies.

Whether the passing fashion of the day exact it or not a gentlewoman should always, for her own sake, and everyone else seated around the dining table, be able to carve well and easily with a big knife, the meats which are placed before her, that she may feel competent to “do the honours” of a table at any time of the day or night.*

It is your duty as a man to teach her how to do this.

The precise mode of carving various dishes must of course depend on many contingencies. For a plain family dinner of spam or corned beef, where strict economy is an imperative consideration, carving must sometimes, of necessity, differ from that which is laid down here. We have confined our instructions to the fashion usually adopted in the world of carving grand meats, and none of your tinned rubbish.

Carving knives and forks are to be had of many forms and sizes, and adapted to different purposes; the former should always have a very keen edge, and the latter two prongs only. A fork with three prongs is not a fork at all, it’s a trident – and that will never do. To employ a fork with one prong would be tantamount to invention, a duty that shall be bestowed upon the man of the house only, and not on the lady, unless it be not in the actual house, but out in the shed, wherein is kept the mower.

Now that the young lady has both the means and the manners at her disposal, form demands it of her to enquire immediately of the gentleman to her left wherein his preference should lie, if he harbours one, for the dark or for the light meats, the proceeding beginning clockwise around the table, the lady ascertaining whether each guest be “a leg man” or “a breast man”.

Basically then she should just tear the fucker to bits.

*As this can only be accomplished by practice, a young lady-person should be early accustomed to carve at home, in the dark, where the failure of their first attempt will cause them much less embarrassment than they would in another sphere, and at a later period of life, perhaps when it’s a bit lighter.