Dinners and Luncheons: Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions

Editor and Publisher of What To Eat , the National Food Magazine.
Superintendent of Food Exhibits at the St. Louis World's Fair.
Honorary Commissioner of Foods at the Jamestown Exposition.
Copyrighted 1907
PAUL PIERCE.
Respectfully dedicated to the overworked, perturbed American hostess in the sincere hope that the suggestions herein may lighten her perplexities and transform her work of entertaining from a task of dread to one of delight.
This little book is the first of a series containing suggestions for entertaining, which will give the hostess novel and practical ideas on the manner of preparing and conducting various social affairs. There is also another volume on Parties and Entertainments, one on Suppers, and another on Breakfasts and Teas and a fifth on Weddings and Wedding Celebrations. These volumes, it should be remembered, have been compiled by the publisher of What To Eat, The National Food Magazine, America's leading publication upon entertainments, dinners, menus, recipes and the other subjects of importance to the hostess.
With the exercise of a little ingenuity and originality, the directions may be varied—added to or altered—to suit all needs. This first book is designed especially to describe those dinners and luncheons which, while complete in themselves, also afford the best suggestions for others.
The Publishers.
Three things are required to give an enjoyable dinner party; good taste, good judgment and an intuitive sense of harmony. Good taste suggests the proper thing in table dressing, in menu cards, in viands and beverages. Good judgment dictates the fortunate time, the appropriate guests, the seasonable dishes and topics; and last, a sense of harmony is the quality that throws a glamour over all, combining pleasant parts in one symmetrical whole, making a picture distinct like the billows, but one like the sea. This sense of harmony never yokes uncongenial persons at table, except through unavoidable necessity. It is on the alert to suggest congenial topics and deftly turn the conversation away from disputed or disagreeable ones. It will often succeed in putting a garrulous and self-assertive man who likes to talk all the time, beside a mild and inoffensive woman who is content if she has naught to do but listen and—eat. It will swell the heart of a silent man with gratitude by reversing this action and placing beside him a woman who chatters like a magpie. It will often turn the stupid guest, who for various reasons will, in spite of all, occasionally appear at the best of tables, over to an intimate friend to whom a sacrifice for the sake of the host or hostess is a pleasure thus saving the formal guest and maintaining the reputation of the household for excellent management. In fact this sense of harmony is the essence that permeates and vitalizes the entire proceedings and assures success to the hostess, because it guarantees pleasure to the guests.