Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📕

salad—is useful; veal may be utilized for all these things, if

chicken is not forthcoming. The delicately treated chicken livers

also make a very good dish, and mushrooms on toast are perfect in

their season. Hot vegetables are never served, except green pease

with some other dish.

Beef, except in the form of a fillet, is never seen at a “sit-down”

supper, and even a fillet is rather too heavy. Lobster in every form

is a favorite supper delicacy, and the grouse; snipe, woodcock,

teal; canvasback, and squab on toast, are always in order.

In these days of Italian warehouses and imported delicacies, the

pressed and jellied meats, p�t�s, sausages, and spiced tongues

furnish a variety for a cold supper. No supper is perfect without a

salad.

The Romans made much of this meal, and among their delicacies were

the ass, the dog, and the snail, sea-hedgehogs, oysters, asparagus,

venison, wild boar, sea-nettles, fish, fowl, game, and cakes. The

Germans to-day eat wild boar, head-cheese, pickles, goose’s flesh

dried, sausages, cheese, and salads for supper, and wash down with

beer. The French, under Louis XIV., began to make the supper their

most finished meal. They used gold and silver dishes, crystal cups

and goblets, exquisite grapes crowned the �pergne, and choicest

fruits were served in golden dishes. The cooks sent up piquant

sauces for the delicately cooked meats, the wines were drunk hot and

spiced. The latter are taken iced now. Many old housekeepers,

however, serve a rich, hot-mulled port for a winter supper. It is a

delicious and not unhealthy beverage, and can be easily prepared.

The doctors, as we have said, condemn a late supper, but the pros

and cons of this subject admit of discussion. Every one, indeed,

must decide for himself.

Few people can undergo excitement of an evening—an opera or play or

concert, or even the pleasant conversation of an evening party—

without feeling hungry. With many, if such an appetite is not

appeased it will cause sleeplessness. To eat lightly and to drink

lightly at supper is a natural instinct with people if they expect

to go to bed at once; but excitement is a great aid to digestion,

and a heavy supper sometimes gives no inconvenience.

Keats seems to have had a vision of a modern supper-table when he

wrote:

“soft he set A table, and …threw thereon A cloth of woven

crimson, gold, and jet; …from forth the closet brought a heap Of

candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd, With jellies soother

than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon, Manna

and dates: …spiced dainties every one.”

The supper being a meal purely of luxury should be very dainty.

Everything should be tasteful and appetizing; the wines should be

excellent, the claret not too cool, the champagne frapp�, or

almost so, the Madeira and the port the temperature of the room, and

the sherry cool. If punch is served, it should be at the end of the

supper.

Many indulgent hostesses now allow young gentlemen to smoke a

cigarette at the supper-table, after the eating and drinking is at

an end, rather than break up the delicious flow of conversation

which at the close of a supper seems to be at its best. This,

however, should not be done unless every lady at the table

acquiesces, as the smell of tobacco-smoke sometimes gives women an

unpleasant sensation.

Suppers at balls and parties include now all sorts of cold and hot

dishes, even a haunch of venison, and a fillet of beef, with

truffles; a cold salmon dressed with a green sauce; oysters in every

form except raw—they are not served at balls; salads of every

description; boned and truffled turkey and chicken; p�t�s of game;

cold partridges and grouse; p�t� de foie gras; our American

specialty, hot canvasback duck; and the Baltimore turtle, terrapin,

oyster and game patties; bonbons, ices, biscuits, creams, jellies,

and fruits, with champagne, and sometimes, of later years, claret

and Moselle cup, and champagne-cup—beverages which were not until

lately known in America, except at gentlemen’s clubs and on board

yachts, but which are very agreeable mixtures, and gaining in favor.

Every lady should know how to mix cup, as it is convenient both for

supper and lawn-tennis parties, and is preferable in its effects to

the heavier article so common at parties—punch.

CHAPTER XXXVII. SIMPLE DINNERS.

To achieve a perfect little dinner with small means at command is

said to be a great intellectual feat. Dinner means so much—a French

cook, several accomplished servants, a very well-stocked china

closet, plate chest, and linen chest, and flowers, wines, bonbons,

and so on. But we have known many simple little dinners given by

young couples with small means which were far more enjoyable than

the gold and silver “diamond” dinners.

Given, first, a knowledge of how to do it; a good cook (not a

cordon bleu); a neat maid-servant in cap and apron—if the lady

can carve (which all ladies should know how to do); if the gentleman

has a good bottle of claret, and another of champagne—or neither,

if he disapproves of them; if the house is neatly and quietly

furnished, with the late magazines on the table; if the welcome is

cordial, and there is no noise, no fussy pretence—these little

dinners are very enjoyable, and every one is anxious to be invited

to them.

But people are frightened off from simple entertainments by the

splendor of the great luxurious dinners given by the very rich. It

is a foolish fear. The lady who wishes to give a simple but good

dinner has first to consult what is seasonable. She must offer the

dinner of the season, not seek for those strawberries in February

which are always sour, nor peaches in June, nor pease at Christmas.

Forced fruit is never good.

For an autumnal small dinner here is a very good menu:

Sherry./Oysters on the half-shell./Chablis, Soupe � la Reine.

Blue-fish, broiled./Hock, Filet de Boeuf aux Champignons./Champagne

Or,

Roast Beef or Mutton./Claret. Roast Partridges./ Burgundy, or Sherry

Salad of Tomatoes. Cheese./Liqueurs

Of course, in these days, claret and champagne are considered quite

enough for a small dinner, and one need not offer the other wines.

Or, as Mrs. Henderson says in her admirable cook-book, a very good

dinner maybe given with claret alone. A table claret to add to the

water is almost the only wine drunk in France or Italy at an

everyday dinner. Of course no wine at all is expected at the tables

of those whose principles forbid alcoholic beverages, and who

nevertheless give excellent dinners without them.

A perfectly fresh white damask tablecloth, napkins of equally

delicate fabric, spotless glass and silver, pretty china, perhaps

one high glass dish crowned with fruit and flowers—sometimes only

the fruit—chairs that are comfortable, a room not too warm, the

dessert served in good taste, but not overloaded—this is all one

needs. The essentials of a good dinner are but few.

The informal dinner invitations should be written by the lady

herself in the first person. She may send for her friends only a few

days before she wants them to come. She should be ready five minutes

before her guests arrive, and in the parlor, serene and cool,

“mistress of herself, though china fall.” She should see herself

that the dinner-table is properly laid, the champagne and sherry

thoroughly cooled, the places marked out, and, above all, the guests

properly seated.

“Ay, there’s the rub.” To invite the proper people to meet each

other, to seat them so that they can have an agreeable conversation,

that is the trying and crucial test. Little dinners are social;

little dinners are informal; little dinners make people friends. And

we do not mean little in regard to numbers or to the amount of

good food; we mean simple dinners.

All the good management of a young hostess or an old one cannot

prevent accident, however. The cook may get drunk; the waiter may

fall and break a dozen of the best plates; the husband may be kept

down town late, and be dressing in the very room where the ladies

are to take off their cloaks (American houses are frightfully

inconvenient in this respect). All that the hostess can do is to

preserve an invincible calm, and try not to care—at least not to

show that she cares. But after a few attempts the giving of a simple

dinner becomes very easy, and it is the best compliment to a

stranger. A gentleman travelling to see the customs of a country is

much more pleased to be asked to a modest repast where he meets his

hostess and her family than to a state dinner where he is ticketed

off and made merely one at a banquet.

Then the limitations of a dinner can be considered. It is not kind

to keep guests more than an hour, or two hours at the most, at

table. French dinners rarely exceed an hour. English dinners are too

long and too heavy, although the conversation is apt to be

brilliant. At a simple dinner one can make it short.

It is better to serve coffee in the drawing-room, although if the

host and hostess are agreed on this point, and the ladies can stand

smoke, it is served at table, and the gentlemen light their

cigarettes. In some houses smoking is forbidden in the dining-room.

The practice of the ladies retiring first is an English one, and the

French consider it barbarous. Whether we are growing more French or

not, we seem to be beginning to do away with the separation after

dinner.

It is the custom at informal dinners for the lady to help the soup

and for the gentleman to carve; therefore the important dishes are

put on the table. But the servants who wait should be taught to have

sidetables and sideboards so well placed that anything can be

removed immediately after it is finished. A screen is a very useful

adjunct in a dining-room.

Inefficient servants have a disagreeable habit of running in and out

of the dining-room in search of something that should have been in

readiness; therefore the lady of the house had better see beforehand

that French rolls are placed under every napkin, and a silver basket

full of them ready in reserve. Also large slices of fresh soft bread

should be on the side table, as every one does not like hard bread,

and should be offered a choice.

The powdered sugar, the butter, the caster, the olives, the

relishes, should all be thought of and placed where each can be

readily found. Servants should be taught to be noiseless, and to

avoid a hurried manner. In placing anything on or taking anything

off a table a servant should never reach across a person seated at

table for that purpose. However hurried the servant may be, or

however near at hand the article, she should be taught to walk

quietly to the left hand of each guest to remove things, while she

should pass everything in the same manner, giving the guest the

option of using his right hand with which to help himself. Servants

should have a silver or plated knife-tray to remove the gravy-spoon

and carving knife and fork before removing the platter. All the

silver should be thus removed; it makes a table much neater.

Servants should be taught to put a plate and spoon and fork at every

place before each course.

After the meats and before the pie, pudding, or ices, the table

should be carefully cleared of everything but fruit and flowers—all

plates, glasses, carafes, salt-cellars,