Etiquette by Emily Post (thriller novels to read txt) 📕

Carving On The Table

Carving is sometimes seen at "home" dinner tables. A certain type of man always likes to carve, and such a one does. But in forty-nine houses out of fifty, in New York at least, the carving is done by the cook in the kitchen—a roast while it is still in the roasting pan, and close to the range at that, so that nothing can possibly get cooled off in the carving. After which the pieces are carefully put together again, and transferred to an intensely hot platter. This method has two advantages over table carving; quicker service, and hotter food. Unless a change takes place in the present fashion, none except cooks will know anything about carving, which was once considered an art necessary to every gentleman. The boast of the high-born Southerner, that he could carve a canvas-back holding it on his fork, will be as unknown as the driving of a four-in-hand.

Old-fashioned butlers sometimes carve in the pantry, but in the most modern service all carving is done by the cook. Cold meats are, in the English service, put whole on the sideboard and the family and guests cut off what they choose themselves. In America cold meat is more often sliced and laid on a platter garnished with finely chopped meat jelly and water cress or parsley.

The "Stag" Or "Bachelor" Dinner

A man's dinner is sometimes called a "stag" or a "bachelor" dinner; and as its name implies, is a dinner given by a man and for men only. A man's dinner is usually given to celebrate an occasion of welcome or farewell. The best-known bachelor dinner is the one given by the groom just before his wedding. Other dinners are more apt to be given by one man (or a group of men) in honor of a noted citizen who has returned from a long absence, or who is about to embark on an expedition or a foreign mission. Or a young man may give a dinner in honor of a friend's twenty-first birthday; or an older man may give a dinner merely because he has a quantity of game which he has shot and wants to share with his especial friends.

Nearly always a man's dinner is given at the host's club or his bachelor quarters or in a private room in a hotel. But if a man chooses to give a stag dinner in his own house, his wife (or his mother) should not appear. For a wife to come downstairs and receive the guests for him, can not be too strongly condemned as out of place. Such a maneuver on her part, instead of impressing his guests with her own grace and beauty, is far more likely to make them think what a "poor worm" her husband must be, to allow himself to be hen-pecked. And for a mother to appear at a son's dinner is, if anything, worse. An essential piece of advice to every woman is: No matter how much you may want to say "How do you do" to your husband's or your son's friends—don't!

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The Service Problem

People who live all the year in the country are not troubled with formal dinner giving, because (excepting on great estates) formality and the country do not go together.

For the one or two formal dinners which the average city dweller feels obliged to give every season, nothing is easier than to hire professionals; it is also economical, since nothing is wasted in experiment. A cook equal to the Gildings' chef can be had to come in and cook your dinner at about the price of two charwomen; skilled butlers or waitresses are to be had in all cities of any size at comparatively reasonable fees.

The real problem is in giving the innumerable casual and informal dinners for which professionals are not only expensive, but inappropriate. The problem of limited equipment would not present great difficulty if the tendency of the age were toward a slower pace, but the opposite is the case; no one wants to be kept waiting a second at table, and the world of fashion is growing more impatient and critical instead of less.

The service of a dinner can however be much simplified and shortened by choosing dishes that do not require accessories.

Dishes That Have Accompanying Condiments

Nothing so delays the service of a dinner as dishes that must immediately be followed by necessary accessories. If there is no one to help the butler or waitress, no dish must be included on the menu—unless you are only one or two at table, or unless your guests are neither critical nor "modern"—that is not complete in itself.

For instance, fish has nearly always an accompanying dish. Broiled fish, or fish meunière, has ice-cold cucumbers sliced as thin as Saratoga chips, with a very highly seasoned French dressing, or a mixture of cucumbers and tomatoes. Boiled fish always has mousseline, Hollandaise, mushroom or egg sauce, and round scooped boiled potatoes sprinkled with parsley. Fried fish must always be accompanied by tartar sauce and pieces of lemon, and a boiled fish even if covered with sauce when served, is usually followed by additional sauce.

Many meats have condiments. Roast beef is never served at a dinner party—it is a family dish and generally has Yorkshire pudding or roast potatoes on the platter with the roast itself, and is followed by pickles or spiced fruit.

Turkey likewise, with its chestnut stuffing and accompanying cranberry sauce, is not a "company" dish, though excellent for an informal dinner. Saddle of mutton is a typical company dish—all mutton has currant jelly. Lamb has mint sauce—or mint jelly.

Partridge or guinea hen must have two sauce boats—presented on one tray—browned bread-crumbs in one, and cream sauce in the other.

Apple sauce goes with barnyard duck.

The best accompaniment to wild duck is the precisely timed 18 minutes in a quick oven! And celery salad, which goes with all game, need not be especially hurried.

Salad is always the accompaniment of "tame game," aspics, cold meat dishes of all sorts, and is itself "accompanied by" crackers and cheese or cheese soufflé or cheese straws.

Special Menus Of Unaccompanied Dishes

One person can wait on eight people if dishes are chosen which need no supplements. The fewer the dishes to be passed, the fewer the hands needed to pass them. And yet many housekeepers thoughtlessly order dishes within the list above, and then wonder why the dinner is so hopelessly slow, when their waitress is usually so good!

The following suggestions are merely offered in illustration; each housekeeper can easily devise further for herself. It is not necessary to pass anything whatever with melon or grapefruit, or a macédoine of fruit, or a canapé. Oysters, on the other hand, have to be followed by tabasco and buttered brown bread. Soup needs nothing with it (if you do not choose split pea which needs croutons, or petite marmite which needs grated cheese). Fish dishes which are "made" with sauce in the dish, such as sole au vin blanc, lobster Newburg, crab ravigote, fish mousse, especially if in a ring filled with plenty of sauce, do not need anything more. Tartar sauce for fried fish can be put in baskets made of hollowed-out lemon rind—a basket for each person—and used as a garnishing around the dish.

Filet mignon, or fillet of beef, both of them surrounded by little clumps of vegetables share with chicken casserole in being the life-savers of the hostess who has one waitress in her dining-room. Another dish, but more appropriate to lunch than to dinner, is of French chops banked against mashed potatoes, or purée of chestnuts, and surrounded by string beans or peas. None of these dishes requires any following dish whatever, not even a vegetable.

Fried chicken with corn fritters on the platter is almost as good as the two beef dishes, since the one green vegetable which should go with it, can be served leisurely, because fried chicken is not quickly eaten. And a ring of aspic with salad in the center does not require accompanying crackers as immediately as plain lettuce.

Steak and broiled chicken are fairly practical since neither needs gravy, condiment, or sauce—especially if you have a divided vegetable dish so that two vegetables can be passed at the same time.

If a hostess chooses not necessarily the above dishes but others which approximately take their places, she need have no fear of a slow dinner, if her one butler or waitress is at all competent.

The Possibilities Of The Plain Cook

In giving informal or little dinners, you need never worry because you cannot set the dishes of a "professional" dinner-party cook before your friends or even strangers; so long as the food that you are offering is good of its kind.

It is by no means necessary that your cook should be able to make the "clear" soup that is one of the tests of the perfect cook (and practically never produced by any other); nor is it necessary that she be able to construct comestible mosaics and sculptures. The essential thing is to prevent her from attempting anything she can't do well. If she can make certain dishes that are pretty as well as good to taste, so much the better. But remember, the more pretentious a dish is, the more it challenges criticism.

If your cook can make neither clear nor cream soup, but can make a delicious clam chowder, better far to have a clam chowder! On no account let her attempt clear green turtle, which has about as good a chance to be perfect as a supreme of boned capon—in other words, none whatsoever! And the same way throughout dinner. Whichever dishes your own particular Nora or Selma or Marie can do best, those are the ones you must have for your dinners. Another thing: it is not important to have variety. Because you gave the Normans chicken casserole the last time they dined with you is no reason why you should not give it to them again—if that is the "specialty of the house" as the French say. A late, and greatly loved, hostess whose Sunday luncheons at a huge country house just outside of Washington were for years one of the outstanding features of Washington's smartest society, had the same lunch exactly, week after week, year after year. Those who went to her house knew just as well what the dishes would be as they did where the dining-room was situated. At her few enormous and formal dinners in town, her cook was allowed to be magnificently architectural, but if you dined with her alone, the chances were ten to one that the Sunday chicken and pancakes would appear before you.

Do Not Experiment For Strangers

Typical dinner-party dishes are invariably the temptation no less than the downfall of ambitious ignorance. Never let an inexperienced cook attempt a new dish for company, no matter how attractive her description of it may sound. Try it yourself, or when you are having family or most intimate friends who will understand if it turns out all wrong that it is a "trial"