Beautifully white damask, and a green cloth underneath, are indispensable.
In all ranks, and in every family, one important art in housekeeping is to make what remains from one day’s entertainment contribute to the elegance or plenty of the next day’s dinner. This is a principle understood by persons in the very highest ranks of society in France, who maintain the most splendid and expensive establishments. Vegetables, ragouts, and soups may be rewarmed; and jellies and blancmanges remoulded, with no deterioration of their qualities. Savoury or sweet patties, croquets, rissoles, vol-au-vents, fritters, tartlets, &c., may be served almost without cost, where cookery is going forward on a large scale. In the French kitchen, a numerous class of culinary preparations, called entrées de dessert, or made-dishes of left things, are served even at grand entertainments.
At dinners of any pretension the first course consists of soups and fish, removed by boiled poultry, ham, or tongue, roasts, stews, &c.; and of vegetables, with a few made-dishes, as ragouts, curries, hashes, cutlets, patties, fricandeaux, &c., in as great variety as the number of dishes permits. For the second course, roasted poultry or game at the top and bottom, with dressed vegetables, omelets, macaroni, jellies, creams, salads, preserved fruit, and all sorts of sweet things and pastry are employed, endeavouring to give an article of each sort, as a jelly and a cream. This is a more common arrangement than three courses, which are attended with so much additional trouble both to the guests and servants.
Whether the dinner be of two or three courses it is managed nearly in the same way. Two dishes of fish dressed in different ways, if suitable, should occupy the top and bottom; and two soups, a white and a brown, or a mild and a high-seasoned, are best disposed on each side of the centre-piece: the fish-sauces are placed between the centre-piece and the dish of fish to which each is appropriate; and this, with the decanted wines drunk during dinner, forms the first course. When there are rare French or Rhenish wines, they are placed in the original bottles, in ornamented wine-vases, between the centre-piece and the top and bottom dishes; or if four kinds, they are ranged round the plateau. If one bottle, it is placed in a vase in the centre.
The second course at a purely English dinner, when there are three courses, consists of roasts and stews for the top and bottom; turkey or fowls, or fricandeaux, or ham garnished, or tongue for the sides; with small made-dishes for the corners, served in covered dishes, as palates, curry of any kind, ragout or fricassée of rabbits, stewed mushrooms, &c., &c.
The third course consists of game, confectionary, the more delicate vegetables dressed in the French way, puddings, creams, jellies, etc.
Caraffes, with the tumblers belonging to and placed over them, are laid at proper intervals. Where hock, champagne, &c., &c., are served, they are handed round between the courses. A very bad habit has for some years prevailed of not placing any wine on the table, thus leaving you at the mercy of servants who rarely come round, and then scarcely half-fill your glass. This is meant to be an imitation of the French system, but nothing can be more unlike the system adopted in France. The English imitators, or would-be imitators, wholly forget that a guest at a French table can never languish for lack of wine, for “vin ordinaire” always remains on the table, while only the very highest qualities of wine are handed round by the servants. In England, for many years past, the table is altogether stripped of wine, and the guests are at the mercy of butlers of paid waiters, who use the wine either for their private drinking after the dinner, in the servants’ hall, or of hosts who, to save their wine, would stint their guests. When the third course is cleared away, cheese, butter, a fresh salad, or sliced cucumber, are usually handed round; and the finger-glasses precede the dessert. At many tables, particularly in Indian houses, it is customary merely to hand quickly round a glass vessel or two filled with simple, or simply perfumed tepid water, made by the addition of a little rose or lavender water, or a home-made strained infusion of rose-leaves or lavender spikes. Into this water each guest may dip the corner of his napkin, and with it refresh his lips and the tips of his fingers.
The Dessert, at an English table, may consist merely of two dishes of fine fruit, for the top and bottom; common or dried fruits, filberts, etc., for the corners or sides, and a cake for the middle, with ice-pails in hot weather. Liqueurs are handed round at this stage; and the wines usually drank after dinner are placed, decanted, on the table along with the dessert. The ice-pails and plates are removed as soon as the company finish their ice. This may be better understood by following the exact arrangement of what is considered a fashionable dinner of three courses and a dessert.
Memorandum respecting Dinners.—To make your Bill of Fare according to the season and the number of your company. When you have two roasts, they should bear no resemblance to each other—i.e., one should be white and the other brown.
It is not in general the custom to place the fish sauces on the table, except in establishments where there is a servant to every guest, but so placed they are always most accessible. It is a great convenience to have the sauce near you when you want it.