Worldlex Wiki In service à la française, several stages of the meal, corresponding to the stages of "Classical Service", are placed on the table at the same time. Each stage can be presented in its own course, or the stages can be grouped together to produce a meal of fewer courses. Regardless of the presentation on the table, the stages of the meal were consumed in the "Classical" order, known to those attending the meal but rarely evident in contemporaneous menus or descriptions of meals.
The number of dishes served at the meal depended on the number of guests. Multiple dishes were served for each stage, for example, multiple potages, multiple entrées, multiple roasts, and so on. For a large assembly, the variety of dishes could be staggeringly large, but the guests could sample only some of the dishes.
Meals could range from one to five courses, but from the beginning of the 19th century, the most common arrangement in France was service in 3 courses:
- Potages + hors d’œuvres + entrées + relevés
- Roasts + salads + entremets (sweet and savory)
- Desserts (ices and ice creams, fresh and preserved fruits, and cheese)
Service à la russe
In service à la russe, individual dishes are brought to the table sequentially and served separately to each guest. Elaborate meals served à la russe generally include 6 or 7 courses, but they may have a dozen or more. The same dish or choice of dishes is offered to each guest at each course. All guests take the soup, but they may decline any other course.
The underlying sequence of dishes corresponds to the "Classical Order" established in service à la française, but there were some changes over time, including oysters or cold hors d’œuvres to start the meal, a separate fish course before the entrées, the loss of the savory entremets course, the emphasis on ices and ice cream in the dessert course, and the loss of the fruit course. After the 1950s, at dinners in the American style, salad became popular as a first course cold hors d’œuvre, an innovation criticized by Louis Diat.
In the late 19th century, Charles Ranhofer outlined in detail the dishes necessary for restaurant dinners ranging from five to fourteen courses. His five-course dinner includes soup, fish, a choice of two entrées, one roast with a salad, and dessert. Longer dinners are created by adding to the menu additional courses of side dishes (the hors d’œuvres of Classical Service), removes (relevés), entrées, frozen punch, cold dishes, and hot and cold sweet desserts (sweet entremets). Some courses include a choice of dishes, as in the soup, side dish, fish, roast, salad, and dessert courses; other courses are presented as multiple dishes in succession, as in the entrée courses. Ranhofer also gives instructions for the appropriate wines at each course. His extensive menu of 14 courses is as follows:
- Oysters.
- 2 Soups.
- S.D. ["side dishes"] hot and cold.
- 2 Fish, potatoes.
- 1 Remove, vegetables.
- 1 Entrée, vegetables.
- 1 Entrée, vegetables.
- 1 Entrée, vegetables.
- 1 Punch.
- 1 or 2 Roasts.
- 1 or 2 Colds, salad.
- 1 Hot sweet dessert.
- 1 or 2 Cold sweet des'rts.
- 1 or 2 Ices. Dessert [the last dessert is fruit, served with the ices].
In 1922, Emily Post, arguably the most influential 20th-century writer on American social customs, recommends menus of seven courses for formal meals—cold hors-d’œuvres, soup, fish, entrée, roast, salad, and dessert, followed by after-dinner coffee. "The menu for an informal dinner would leave out the entrée, and possibly either the hors-d’oeuvre or the soup." By 1945, Post writes that the shorter "informal" meal of five courses and after-dinner coffee in the first edition of her book had become the norm for formal dinners at private homes—soup or oysters or melon or clams; fish or entrée; roast; salad; and dessert; followed by after-dinner coffee in the library or drawing room. Wine service could include a separate wine for each course, or champagne may be the only wine after the sherry served with the soup.
In the 1960s, Jackie Kennedy reduced the menus at White House dinners from the seven courses typical of mid-century formal occasions to a mere four courses—fish, meat, salad, and dessert or, on lean days, soup, fish, salad, and dessert. Dinners of only four courses were not new, but Kennedy’s influence set the style for White House state dinners and other formal dinners through the end of the 20th century.