Modern recipe writers generally note how
many persons a dish will serve, and they occasionally suggest accompanying
dishes or even complete menus. They don’t however, feel the need to advise how
many staff will be needed to serve a suggested menu. In previous times, when
servants were found in almost all homes, except those of the lowest classes, this
must have been most useful advice.
The popular book The Complete Family Cook; Being a System of Cookery, Adapted to the
Tables not only of the Opulent, but of Persons of Moderate Fortune and
Condition (fourth edition, 1796) by Menon (writer on cookery) and S. Taylor
(writer on cookery) gave suggested menus for meals for different occasions, of
varying degrees of seriousness, requiring from five to twelve servers.
Today I have chosen a supper menu from the
book, for your late 18th century self, on the assumption that you have
a moderate fortune and have five servants at your disposal.
A Table of Twelve Covers for Supper, served
by Five.
FIRST COURSE.
A leg of mutton
roasted for the middle
Four dishes (entrées); veal
cutlets à
la Lyonnoise, a beef rump en matelote,
a duck with
turnips, two chickens en giblotte.
SECOND COURSE.
A sallad for the
middle.
Two dishes (plats
de rôt);
a young turkey, a young duck.
A plate with
oranges.
Plate with a remoulade
in a sauce [pan? unreadable]
THIRD COURSE.
Five small dishes,
(entremets); cheese-cakes for the middle, eggs with streaked bacon,
Spanish chardons,
bread fritters, burnt cream.
FOURTH COURSE.
Iced cheese for
the middle, or a bowl of fruit.
Compote of apples à la Portugaise.
Compote of peaches.
Plate of
sweet-meats.
Two plates of
nuts.
Plate of grapes.
As the recipe for the day, I give you Burnt
Cream, from the same book.
Burnt
Cream.
Put
two spoonfulls of flour, mixed by little and little with the whites and yolks
of four eggs, into a stew-pan, with half a spoonfull of orange-flower water,
and a little green lemon peel shred very fine: moisten them with a gill of
milk, and put in a little salt, and two ounces of sugar; let it simmer half an
hour over a flow fire, constantly stirring ; then put a bit of sugar, with half
a glass of water into your dish; set it upon a stove over a good fire, and let
it boil till of the colour of cinnamon, and then, pour in the cream: have
ready
a large knife to spread the sugar which remains on the rim of the dish upon the
cream, taking care to do it quickly.
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