Joshua:
Here are some quantity tips I used to pass on to cooking students back when I taught, which was about a bazillion years ago:
- Determine how many you would seat for a "company dinner." Obviously, you need one place setting for each person.
- Add a 25% overrun to that. If you want to seat six, have eight place settings. This takes care of things like when someone drops a fork, and also takes care of those times when a piece or two is "out of commission," say, when you've mistakenly fed a dinner fork to the Disposall and haven't repaired or replaced it yet.
- Serving pieces are up to you, but you can never have too many, and I strongly urge you to have more than one of everything. If someone drops the butter knife, it's great to be able to calmly go to the sideboard or the drawer and pull out another one. It's a lot less graceful to have to stop and wash it in front of God and everybody.
- Minimum suggested serving pieces (if you don't want to get two of everything as I suggested above) would be:
1- Two solid (unpierced) serving spoons.
2- One pierced serving spoon (for juicy vegetables like green beans).
3- One sugar spoon.
4- One butter knife.
5- One gravy ladle.
6- One pastry server.
7- One cold meat fork.
This is minimum - I have considerably more (for instance, four serving spoons, four pierced spoons and four cold meat forks, plus two each of the other items listed).
Also, the standard manufacturers' idea of a place setting is preposterous. They want you to get by on a dinner knife, a dinner fork, a dessert spoon (usually and erroneously called a tablespoon or perhaps an "oval soup spoon"), and a teaspoon or two. Bushwah.
What I consider minimal is:
1- Dinner knife
2- Dinner fork
3- Salad fork
4- TWO dessert spoons (one for dessert and one for soup if no round-bowled soup spoons are available in your pattern) OR -
5- One dessert spoon and one round-bowled soup spoon
6- Teaspoon. I know many people use a teaspoon for dessert, but the larger spoon is the correct one.
To this you can add if you like (I like):
1- Iced tea spoon
2- Individual butter knife (usually termed a "spreader")
3- Cocktail/seafood fork
4- Extra dinner knife (for first courses)
5- Extra dinner fork (for first courses)
6- Demitasse spoons
After that, the sky's the limit - fish forks, fish knives, bouillon spoons, marrow spoons, asparagus tongs, snail forks and tongs, salt spoons, you name it.
For a purchasing plan, I would suggest four basic place settings first (for your use and some entertaining), plus serving pieces. You can add more places as funds permit. This is especially important with sterling - you will have several thousand dollars tied up in the stuff before you know it. Stainless is much easier on the wallet, of course.
Last tip: The more ornate a pattern is, the less it shows scratches. The plainer it is, the easier it is to polish. You pay your money and you take your choice.
