Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗

to small details a

very humble repast may be most elegant. A silver bread-basket for

the thin slices of bread, a pretty cheese-dish, a napkin around the

cheese, pats of butter in a pretty dish, flowers in vases, fruits

neatly served—these things cost little, but they add a zest to the

pleasures of the table.

 

If a hot luncheon is served, it is not etiquette to put the

vegetables on the table as at dinner; they should be handed by the

waiter. The luncheon-table is already full of the articles for

dessert, and there is no place for the vegetables. The hot entr�es

or cold entr�es are placed before the master or mistress, and each

guest is asked what he prefers. The whole aspect of luncheon is thus

made perfectly informal.

 

If a lady gives a more formal lunch, and has it served � la Russe,

the first entr�e—let us say chops and green pease—is handed by

the waiter, commencing with the lady who sits on the right hand of

the master of the house. This is followed by vegetables. Plates

having been renewed, a salad and some cold ham can be offered. The

waiter fills the glasses with sherry, or offers claret. When

champagne is served at lunch, it is immediately after the first dish

has been served, and claret and sherry are not then given unless

asked for.

 

After the salad a fresh plate, with a dessert-spoon and small fork

upon it, is placed before each person. The ice-cream, pie, or

pudding is then placed in front of the hostess, who cuts it, and

puts a portion on each plate. After these dainties have been

discussed, a glass plate, serviette, and finger-bowl are placed

before each guest for fruit. The servant takes the plate from his

mistress after she has filled it, and hands it to the lady of first

consideration, and so on. When only members of the family are

present at luncheon, the mistress of the house is helped first.

 

Fruit tarts, pudding, sweet omelette, jellies, blancmange, and ice-cream are all proper dessert for luncheon; also luncheon cake, or

the plainer sorts of loaf-cake.

 

It is well in all households, if possible, for the children to

breakfast and lunch with their parents. The teaching of table

manners cannot be begun too soon. But children should never be

allowed to trouble guests. If not old enough to behave well at

table, guests should not be invited to the meals at which they are

present. It is very trying to parents, guests, and servants.

 

When luncheon is to be an agreeable social repast, which guests are

expected to share, then the children should dine elsewhere. No

mother succeeds better in the rearing of her children than she who

has a nursery dining-room, where, under her own eye, her bantlings

are properly fed. It is not so much trouble, either, as one would

think.

 

Table mats are no longer used in stylish houses, either at luncheon

or at dinner. The waiter should have a coarse towel in the butler’s

pantry, and wipe each dish before he puts it on the table.

 

Menu-cards are never used at luncheon. Salt-cellars and small water

carafes may be placed up and down the luncheon-table.

 

In our country, where servants run away and leave their mistress

when she is expecting guests, it is well to be able to improvise a

dish from such materials as may be at hand. Nothing is better than a

cod mayonnaise. A cod boiled in the morning is a friend in the

afternoon. When it is cold remove the skin and bones. For sauce put

some thick cream in a porcelain saucepan, and thicken it with corn-flour which has been mixed with cold water. When it begins to boil,

stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs. As it cools, beat it well to

prevent it from becoming lumpy, and when nearly cold, stir in the

juice of two lemons, a little tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt, and

a soup�on of Cayenne pepper. Peel and slice some very ripe

tomatoes or cold potatoes; steep them in vinegar, with Cayenne,

powdered ginger, and plenty of salt; lay these around the fish, and

cover with the cream sauce. This makes a very elegant cold dish for

luncheon. The tomatoes or potatoes should be taken out of the

vinegar and carefully drained before they are placed around the

fish.

 

Some giblets carefully saved from the ducks, geese, or chickens of

yesterday’s dinner should be stewed in good beef stock, and then set

away to cool. Put them in a stewpan with dried split pease, and boil

them until they are reduced to pulp; serve this mixture hot on

toast, and, if properly flavored with salt and pepper, you have a

good luncheon dish.

 

Vegetable salads of beet-root, potatoes, and lettuce are always

delicious, and the careful housewife who rises early in the morning

and provides a round of cold corned beef, plenty of bread, and a

luncheon cake, need not regret the ephemeral cook, or fear the

coming city guest.

 

Every country housewife should learn to garnish dishes with capers,

a border of water-cresses, plain parsley, or vegetables cut into

fancy forms.

 

Potatoes, eggs, and cold hashed meats, in their unadorned

simplicity, do not come under the head of luxuries. But if the

hashed meat is carefully warmed and well flavored, and put on toast,

if the potatoes are chopped and browned and put around the meat, if

the eggs are boiled, sliced, and laid around as a garnish, and a few

capers and a border of parsley added, you have a Delmonico ragout

that Brillat-Savarin would have enjoyed.

 

CHAPTER XXXVI. SUPPER-PARTIES.

 

After a long retirement into the shades, the supper-party, the

“sit-down Supper,” once so dear to our ancestors, has been again revived.

Leaders of society at Newport have found that, after the hearty

lunch which everybody eats there at one or three o’clock the twelve

or fourteen course dinner at seven o’clock, is too much; that people

come home reluctantly from their ocean drive to dress; and last

summer, in consequence, invitations were issued for suppers at nine

or half-past nine. The suppers at private houses, which had

previously fallen out of fashion by reason of the convenience and

popularity of the great restaurants, were resumed. The very late

dinners in large cities have, no doubt, also prevented the supper

from being a favorite entertainment; but there is no reason (except

the disapproval of doctors) why suppers should not be in fashion in

the country, or where people dine early. In England, where

digestions are better than here, and where people eat more heavily,

“the supper-tray” is an institution, and suppers are generally

spread in every English country house; and we may acknowledge the

fact that the supper—the little supper so dear to the hearts of our

friends of the last century—seems to be coming again into fashion

here. Nothing can be more significant than that Harper’s Bazar

receives many letters asking for directions for setting the table

for supper, and for the proper service of the meats which are to

gayly cover the cloth and enrich this always pleasant repast.

 

In a general way the same service is proper at a supper as at a

dinner, with the single exception of the soup-plates. Oysters on the

half-shell and bouillon served in cups are the first two courses. If

a hot supper is served, the usual dishes are sweetbreads, with green

pease, c�telettes � la financiere, and some sort of game in

season, such as reed-birds in autumn, canvasback ducks, venison, or

woodcock; salads of every kind are in order, and are often served

with the game. Then ices and fruit follow. Cheese is rarely offered,

although some gourmets insist that a little is necessary with the

salad.

 

After each course all the dishes and knives and forks that have been

in use are replaced by fresh ones, and the order and neatness of the

table preserved to the end of the supper. We would think it

unnecessary to mention this most obvious detail of table decorum,

had not several correspondents asked to be informed concerning it.

 

There is, of course, the informal supper, at which the dishes are

all placed on a table together, as for a supper at a large ball.

Meats, dressed salmon, chicken croquettes, salads, jellies, and

ices are a part of the alarming m�lange of which a guest is

expected to partake, with only such discrimination as may be

dictated by prudence or inclination. But this is not the “sit down,”

elegant supper so worthy to be revived, with its courses and its

etiquette and its brilliant conversation, which was the delight of

our grandmothers.

 

A large centre-piece of flowers, with fruit and candies in glass

compotiers, and high forms of nougat, and other sugar devices,

are suitable standards for an elegant supper-table. Three sorts of

wine may be placed on the table in handsome decanters—sherry, or

Madeira, and Burgundy. The guests find oysters on the half-shell,

with little fish forks, all ready for them. The napkin and bread are

laid at the side or in front of each plate. These plates being

removed, other plain plates are put in their place, and cups of

bouillon are served, with gold teaspoons. This course passed, other

plates are put before the guest, and some chicken croquettes or

lobster farci is passed. Sherry or Madeira should already have

been served with the Oysters. With the third course iced champagne

is offered. Then follow game, or fried oysters, salads, and a slice

of p�t� de foie gras, with perhaps tomato salad; and subsequently

ices, jellies, fruit, and coffee, and for the gentlemen a glass of

brandy or cordial. Each course is taken away before the next is

presented. Birds and salad are served together.

 

There is a much simpler supper possible, which is often offered by a

hospitable hostess after the opera or theatre. It consists of a few

Oysters, a pair of cold roast chickens, a dish of lobster or plain

salad, with perhaps a glass of champagne, and one sort of ice-cream,

and involves very little trouble or expense, and can be safely said

to give as much pleasure as the more sumptuous feast. This informal

refreshment is often placed on a red tablecloth, with a dish of

oranges and apples in the centre of the table, and one servant is

sufficient. There should be, however, the same etiquette as to the

changing of plates, knives, and forks, etc., as in the more

elaborate meal.

 

The good housekeeper who gives a supper every evening to her hungry

family may learn many an appetizing device by reading English books

of cookery on this subject. A hashed dish of the meat left from

dinner, garnished with parsley, a potato salad, a few slices of cold

corned beef or ham, some pickled tongues, bread, butter, and cheese,

with ale or cider, is the supper offered at nearly every English

house in the country.

 

The silver and glass, the china and the fruit, should be as

carefully attended to as for a dinner, and everything as neat and as

elegant as possible, even at an informal supper.

 

Oysters, that universal food of the American, are invaluable for a

supper. Fried oysters diffuse a disagreeable odor through the house,

therefore they are not as convenient in a private dwelling as

scalloped oysters, which can be prepared in the afternoon, and which

send forth no odor when cooking. Broiled oysters are very delicate,

and are a favorite dish at an informal supper. Broiled birds and

broiled bones are great delicacies, but they must be prepared by a

very good cook.