When the latter have been removed, the principal meat dish is set in front of the carver, and a hot plate is laid for each guest. At family dinners the carver generally does the helping, although sometimes after the meat is cut it is passed, and each person allowed to help himself.
The vegetables are next passed by the waitress, and offered at the left of each person, and after them the jelly or pickles are served. If, before the meat course, a fish dish or an entrée is offered, it is passed usually in the same fashion. Next comes the salad, which is always passed, after each guest has been supplied with a clean plate. This course removed, all the soiled dishes and the small silver are removed, the table is crumbed, and the dessert is brought in. If fruit succeeds this, a fresh plate and a finger-bowl are given to each one. With the fruit comes the coffee.
Of course there are many families in which the daily menu is simpler than that outlined above. In large families each added course means a perceptible increase of cost, and although the judicious manager who has a fixed allowance for household expenses may so dovetail the retrenchment of one day that it will balance the undue outlay of another, yet in most instances she will feel that if she can feed her household well and satisfy them, without providing them with five or six courses at an ordinary dinner, more than this would savor of extravagance. In some homes soup each day is considered an expensive luxury. So it is when fresh meat must be purchased to make it, or even when fresh or canned vegetables have to be bought for it; but when there are bones or trimmings from raw or cooked meats, or vegetables left over—a half-can of tomatoes, a cupful or two of mashed potato, a saucer of pease, or other similar remnants—or when fish and eggs are plentiful, the soup need be but a small item in the expense, and is really economical, as, by blunting the edge of the appetite, it renders the attack upon the next course less vigorous. There is a large variety of bean, pea, lentil, and cream soups that are cheap, palatable, and nourishing.
Salad is not a frequent dish in many homes, but in warm weather it may well be substituted sometimes for soup and cost little more. Still that may be a good dinner at which neither soup nor salad is seen. The final cup of tea or coffee adds a graceful finish to a simple dessert, and is generally enjoyed by the adult members of the family.
A word concerning the dinner toilette may not be amiss. In England, donning full dress for a late dinner is a matter of course. Not so in America. Our independent citizen usually thinks he honors the home meal quite enough if he washes the dust of the day from his hands and face, and brushes his hair and his coat. Yet there are few homes in which the mistress does not change her gown for dinner, or at least brighten or freshen her attire so as to make it differ decidedly from that in which she appeared at breakfast. The question involuntarily suggests itself why it is easier for a tired woman to dress than it is for a tired man, and one wonders if the husband would not find in a change of toilette the refreshment his wife experiences from a similar operation. Even without putting on full dress, a man should, at least by exchanging his office for a house coat, and assuming fresh collar, cuffs, and cravat, do his share in giving to the dinner-table the look of a pleasant social gathering, instead of a mere stopping-place for food.
DINNER AT NOON
IN some homes it seems out of the question to have a late dinner. There may be several reasons for this. Possibly the mistress of the house does all her own work, and finds it easier to dispose of the bulk of her cooking in the morning than later, since she thus leaves free the afternoon hours for leisure or social duties. Or she may, if she keeps servants, live in a neighborhood where late dinners are so far the exception that she finds it impossible to induce her cook to accede to her desire to change the hour of dinner. Or, still again, it may seem expedient to dine at noon, because that hour better suits her husband and children. In any one of these cases, instead of repining over the inevitable, she should set herself to work to make the best of circumstances, and do all in her power to impart every possible charm to the midday meal.