Table Observances

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: hold your small decanters filled with sherry; light wines should be in your ice-pails, as likewise champagne, if any. Now, if you have not these things you are not obliged to get them; but then do not attempt a great dinner; by that we mean, only give a plain dinner to a few friends, and then let your...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: hold your small decanters filled with sherry; light wines should be in your ice-pails, as likewise champagne, if any. Now, if you have not these things you are not obliged to get them; but then do not attempt a great dinner; by that we mean, only give a plain dinner to a few friends, and then let your arrangement be as near to our directions as circumstances will permit. We have given these directions upon the presumption that you have the things we mention, but if you have other and better things, we do not say they should not be used, nor do we mean that you should not receive your friends unless- you hare all the things named. CHAPTER III. DINNERS AND DINING. Orderino A Dinner.?The French say, les animaux se re- paisseut; 1'homme mange; 1'homme d'esprit seul sait manger. This is strictly true; and we frequently see people invite their friends to dinners too gross for dogs. We were once asked to dine with an Irishman of large fortune; we accepted, we went, and we saw a table badly laid, and worse served. It consisted of a leg of boiled mutton, without sauce, and done to rags; one vegetable dish full of turnips and carrots, not mashed but whole; a goose, roasted to a cinder, without apple sauce, and stuffed full of unchopped onions. This was eaten by some of the party; either together, that is, mutton and goose on the same plate, and, by others, first a slice of mutton then a slice or rather a member of the goose, then more mutton and more goose. This, with two dishes of boiled potatoes, formed the meal; we exclaimed, Dis moi ce quo tu manges je to dirai ce quo tu es. This was in the land of cooks, and in the midst of plenty. Now, we do not expect to teach such a man as this, who for days after talked of his meal, as a magnificent dinner. Truly his fortune might...