Miscellaneous Instructions
Dainty meals are served in a great many houses where there is neither time nor inclination for the number of courses which are considered necessary at other tables. Perfection of serving, that is, perfect comfort, should be aimed at as much in one case as in the other. There should be absolute cleanliness and noiseless movement. Meals should be ready on time, and there should be no occasion to wait for things that ought to be close at hand. Time may be gained without causing confusion, if proper thought be given beforehand to the serving of each particular dish. Instead of passing a fish sauce, it may, in many cases, be put on the platter with the fish, so that the carver serves some of it with each helping. Meat gravies may be put on
the table to be passed from one to another without the help of the waitress. When this is done the waitress should select two suitable gravy boats or bowls, see that they are properly heated and not filled too full. When she has brought hot plates to the carver she may bring the gravy boats, put one near one end of the table and another near the other end. This may be done so quickly that she will be ready to take the first plate which the carver has ready for her. The same rule applies to pudding sauces. Instead of one large bowl or dish, two pretty, smaller ones may be selected and put on the table immediately after the pudding has been placed before the hostess. Pickles and other relishes may be served in two or more small dishes and put at convenient distances along the table.
A dinner-table is much more attractive with a handsome plate before each person as he or she is seated; but where time and space are limited, the cold plate may be dispensed with.
The proper placing of a side-table makes every difference in the serving of a meal. A small table at each end of the room is often desirable. This gives a proper place to put down a vegetable or other dish, without walking the length of the room, when the waitress needs to take a plate to the carver for a second helping. This table may hold whatever extras may be needed by the hostess for the dishes which she serves, as the table near the host holds extra carvers, etc., which he may need. These tables must be used with discretion, and no unsightly dish, which should be at once carried to the pantry, must be allowed to remain on them. Their object, like that of the dinner wagon described in “Care of Dining-Room,” is simply to lessen time between courses and to help a waitress to pass vegetables before meats have grown cold.
The best serving is often most appreciated where there are not the conveniences necessary for carrying out rules which at first sight seem very simple. To remove the dishes from
a dinner of even five or six courses, according to the directions given, it is necessary to have a pantry large enough to put down the dishes as they are taken from the table, without piling one upon the other. This takes a good deal of space. The one waitress has no assistant to take from her hand and deftly separate knives, forks, and spoons from plates and dishes, piling all in a compact manner. It is necessary, therefore, that she should exercise her very best common-sense.
If the pantry opens into a roomy, well-ventilated kitchen, by a swing door which makes no noise, then a large table may be placed in the kitchen so that an extra step or two will make possible the putting down of all dishes for which there is no room in the pantry. Where this is not possible, some means must be devised for gathering together the dishes with the least possible confusion. One way to do it is the following:
When a course is finished take a suitable tray for soiled dishes; go to the right of each
person to remove the dishes, beginning at any convenient place at the table. After a cereal course, place a dish on your tray and quickly, without any noise, lay the spoon by the side of it on your tray. Put the next dish on the top of the one you have already taken and the spoon by the other spoon. When you have taken dishes and spoons, take plates, piling one above another on your tray.
If there are few people at table, you may take all at once; if there are more, you must judge for yourself how many times to go. Follow this rule: Never pile dishes on a tray in a manner to look disagreeable to yourself or to those who sit at table.
Salad and dessert plates you may remove as you do cereal dishes, putting forks or spoons on the tray by the side of the plates.
After a meat course, go to the right, holding your tray in your left hand near enough to let no particles of food fall upon the table. Take the knife and fork at the same time in your right hand, lay the knife on one side of your
tray and the fork on the other side. As you go around the table in this way put all the knives together on one side and the forks on the other. Carry the knives and forks to the pantry. Next take the plates. Put one above another on your tray until you have taken three or four from the table. Proceed in this manner until all are removed.
A waitress will do well to make herself acquainted as soon as possible with the proper way of serving other courses than those of the simple dinner. She should know how to serve oysters and clams cold on the half-shell, or to see that the oyster plates are thoroughly chilled without being cracked. She should know the different sauces and the correct manner of serving. For instance, if game be served without a sauce, she may offer dressed celery or lettuce to be taken on the same plate. If a hot sauce and a salad are both served, she will provide an extra plate for the salad. She should learn the correct temperature for wines, as well as the glasses in which they belong,
and various other details necessary to be attended to during a full dinner.
Many things may be learned by cheerfully assisting the caterer who serves an occasional dinner in the household, or by taking a position where a part of the parlor maid’s duty is to assist an experienced butler; or, in many houses, the mistress herself will kindly give the necessary instruction.
A waitress who has become competent may arrange and serve special meals, delegating the work done formerly with a caterer to assistants under her. She must be careful not to attempt more than she can safely perform, and then carry out her plan with quiet confidence in her own ability. Except in case of an accident which she cannot remedy, she should not speak to the hostess, who should be left perfectly free to entertain her guests without a care about the food which they are eating. All doubts should be settled before the lady of the house goes to her room to dress for dinner. A waitress, however competent, must consult those whom
she serves upon the special way of having many things done. She must know how to sharpen carvers, but she must not try her hand upon new ones without finding out whether the host prefers to handle them entirely himself; this question to be asked, of course, before laying the table. The special form of serving boiled eggs should also be settled, and the question of serving cheeses whole or broken.
Cheeses of the pineapple and Eadam varieties should be cut so that the top will fit again closely and exclude the air. To preserve perfectly a section cut from any large cheese, it should be kept wrapped in a napkin or piece of cheese cloth wrung out of cider vinegar. Rhine wine will answer the same purpose, but the vinegar will not leave an objectionable trace. Cheese should always be served on a folded napkin, for the reason that it is more or less oily and looks pleasanter on the napkin than on the plate.
The crisp green salad, with its accompaniment
of a red or golden cheese, is one of the most agreeable courses of the dinner, and no unsightly crumbs should be left on the cloth before it is served.
A carving-cloth should not be folded on the table. The corners may be turned deftly together and the cloth removed to a tray on which it may be carried to the pantry, to be folded later.
When a number are at table, only a part of the plates should be put before the carver at one time; but the others must be ready on a near side-table.
By learning to make dainty paper frills for lamb chops or for the bone of a ham, and by studying simple garnishings of fresh parsley, celery tips, and lemon, pleasant effects may be produced and a reputation for taste and skill acquired. The same dish may be served in a variety of ways, one of which may tempt the appetite where others have failed. Instead of serving chicken salad in a plain dish at luncheon, it may be put in cups made by removing
the pulp from solid red tomatoes, and each tomato placed on a bed of green lettuce leaves.
One is always pleased by a novelty, that is, after the more substantial part of a meal is finished, and a waitress who becomes an artist in her especial line may not only give a great deal of pleasure to others, but keep herself from getting tired of the daily routine. If she wishes to raise her work above the level of mere drudgery, she will study to see how she can improve each day upon the work of the day before.
Nothing should ever be done because Mrs. X’s butler does so and so, or because Mrs. Y’s maid says she saw it done like this in England. Every good rule has a good reason for its foundation; every rule which has not a good reason for being should be replaced by a better one.
There are good reasons for serving the lady of the house first, although this rule is often waived to do honor to the distinguished guest
for whom a luncheon or dinner is given. In a country-house several distinguished people or dear friends are entertained at one time; to serve the hostess first and follow a regular order along the table makes no distinction. Novelties are often introduced, both in food and in service. Dishes are served before which a guest hesitates as to which fork or which spoon to use until he glances at his hostess to see which one she takes up.
Not every one who travels goes to the East, and not every one who goes to the East is entertained by Eastern dignitaries and brings Eastern customs home. When a lady does dispense with finger-bowls and follows the custom of a Grand Pacha in having passed to her guests a large silver bowl of rose water, in which each one in turn is expected to dip the tips of the fingers and wipe them on a pearl-fringed towel, she need not be surprised if the first guest, seeing this bowl of rare workmanship presented at her left hand, looks about on the tray for some spoon or ladle by
which she is to help herself to the pale beverage. If the bowl be handed first to the hostess and she follows the custom of the Grand Pacha, no guest need betray that she was not brought up in the house of a Grand Pacha herself.
A hostess who takes pride in having her forks made to suit special courses, like asparagus, and who has several forks laid by each plate before dinner is served, finds it necessary to take up the right one before her guests make a choice. I have in mind a dinner where the hostess delayed the tasting of a course, the absent-minded host took the wrong fork, some guests took one and some another. The butler did his best to replace the right ones; but after all his efforts, somebody had a wrong fork to the end of the dinner.
A waitress should remember, when going into a new family, that some things, which seem novel to her and only to be done away with, may be old-established family customs, to which she must adapt herself if she is to
give satisfaction. If she finds that pease, tomatoes, and other vegetables are served in a semi-liquid state instead of the drier one to which she has been accustomed, she must use the small dishes provided, remembering that the rule, “all vegetables are to be eaten from the dinner plate,” is not accepted by all housekeepers, although it is by a great number. So, if fish knives are provided, she need not feel that she is offending against good manners, even if she has seen only forks used before.
However, there are some things which a little true tact and management might alter for the benefit of all concerned. I knew one table where many well-cooked dishes and many delicate desserts were served, at which the relishes were something startling. Spanish peppers, stuffed and pickled, I had been used to see cut in small pieces and served from a pickle dish. At this table a whole stuffed Spanish pepper was served to each person in a small dish which held some of the vinegar as well as the pepper.
An improvement upon this is the serving of olives in small dishes to each person, although it is hard to realize how any one at a well-served dinner would care to eat a relish as if it were a vegetable. Those who are fond of olives think them very, very good, and those who do not like them think they are horrid; but it would seem better to lunch off of them when alone, and not neglect for one flavor the many flavors prepared for enjoyment during a well-thought-out dinner.
A waitress with good health, a fair amount of brains, and a determination to be a better waitress than any woman was before, has a great field before her. But if she aspires to raise waiting to the dignity of a profession, she must study; she must educate her eye to know the difference between a line that is exactly straight and one that is slightly askew; she must train her memory until the daily routine is perfectly easy and she can give thought to decoration and invention; she must educate her hands until they are to be trusted
with the care of the frailest glass and china, and educate her sense of smell and of taste until she can suit each salad dressing to the dinner of which it forms a part, making it rich or piquant, as the other dishes demand.
In one of our largest cities I have been shown a large kitchen which had been fitted up next to an employment bureau for the training of partially trained cooks and waitresses. The teacher had been dismissed, the cooking utensils and the range were for sale. “Why?” “Because the ladies would not give their maids any time to come and learn.” I have no doubt that this was true; but there are plenty of ladies who do wish their maids to learn, and if those who have opportunities for improvement will make the most of those opportunities, they will raise the standard of work, and inspire their co-workers who are now willing to stay as they are and let well enough alone.