Service à la française

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As a service à la française (dt. "Operation French-style"), rarely service à l'anglaise (dt. "Operation English fashion"), a is Speisenfolge refer to operations of at each of two or three courses several very different dishes are on the table at the same time. The sequence of dishes that is common in the western world today, in which only one dish is served with its side dishes in a multi-course menu, is called service à la Russian .

The service à la française is a way of serving a menu with an unusual variety of dishes that has become unusual today: during the first and second menu courses, savory to sweet dishes were served, which, according to today's understanding, each have a full menu with a range of dishes from starter to dessert correspond to. This form of meal developed in Europe from the food culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and largely fixed conventions for the order of the dishes had emerged in the course of the 18th century. For formal dinners and banquets, service à la française was the norm well into the 19th century.

procedure

A service à la française, like today's menu, consists of several courses, but each individual course consists of a variety of dishes. Basically, the dishes are served in the following order:

First course: hors d' oeuvres, soups, relevantés, entrées
Second course: roasts, vegetable dishes and desserts
Third course: dessert

Great importance was attached to the arrangement of the dishes on the table. A certain symmetry in the courts was expected. Tablecloths were deliberately ironed so that they had a sharp crease in their middle so that the servants could achieve this symmetry when serving the dishes.

Participants in a meal served à la française sat closer together than is usual today. It was expected that they ate primarily from the food that was in their immediate vicinity. It was still within the social norm to ask a servant for a portion of food that was further away. This was particularly accepted when the host particularly emphasized this dish in an opening speech. On the other hand, asking too often for a portion of food that was out of reach was perceived as inappropriate.

The guests were also expected to perceive what was missing from their neighbors and that they could not reach or cut themselves. As a gesture of friendship, servants could also send a portion of a particularly valued dish to a guest sitting further away. However, his own refinement and excellent table manners were underscored by those who, in spite of what today is considered to be a very large abundance of dishes and delicacies, held back and ate very little.

First course

Basic procedure and courts

Coronation meal of Joseph II in Frankfurt (1764). The guests of the coronation meal have not yet taken their seats at the front table, but the dishes are already on the table in a strictly symmetrical arrangement.

Guests at a banquet that was served à la française found a lavishly laden table as soon as they entered the room in which the meal was taken, on which the majority of the dishes from the first course were already standing. Behavioral books specifically pointed out that the food should not be randomly arranged on the table. There was a food hierarchy that placed the central dishes in the middle. Other dishes were therefore arranged symmetrically, so that, for example, two different soups were left and right of the central dishes. In the 18th century it was already common for these soups to differ significantly in color and texture. A “brown” and a “white” soup would be typical, for example: A brown soup consisted of veal or mutton broth with finely chopped meat from a roast duck. The white soup was bound with cream or egg yolk and contained the white meat of a chicken as an insert.

In addition to soups, it was common for intermediate dishes, the so-called entrées, to be on the table. By this one understood dishes such as ragouts of veal cheeks or tongue, dishes with poultry meat or veal sweetbreads and pies. It was common for a dessert such as a cake to be on the table in addition to fruit plates. Between the dishes stood candles, salt, flower arrangements and decorative elements. This was supplemented by the so-called “small dishes”, the hors d'oeuvres (German: “outside the factory”), which were spatially separated from the other dishes in the outer area of ​​the table. It was usually small patties, pickled fish, eggs, artichokes, radishes, and the like. Overall, the table should give an impression of opulence.

It has been customary for soups to start a meal as early as the 17th century. As soon as the banquet guests had eaten, both the soup plates and soup troughs were removed. The soup troughs on the table were then replaced by so-called relevantés . Relevés were usually whole large fish, poultry or large pieces of meat.

Examples of dishes served during the first course

An example of a service à la française are three traditional menus (not complete in each case) that come from different time periods and for which very different hosts were responsible.

George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney, served his guests a first course in 1715 in which only one soup, namely a pea soup, was served. At that time, pea soup was a very popular soup, but it differs from the typical pea soup because it is made from fresh peas and flavored with mint, among other things. Whole boiled ham as well as boiled chicken, spinach pancakes, pigeon pie and braised beef were served as relevés.

In the household of Pastor James Woodforde from Norfolk in the second half of the 18th century, only one course was served on days when no guests were entertained, with several dishes on the table. On the other hand, in the first course, guests were offered a large cod, leg of mutton, chicken pie, root vegetables and pudding in addition to soups.

On the other hand, the big banquet from 1846, which was served in the Reform Club in London in honor of Ibrahim Pascha and at which 150 people were among the guests, was very elaborate . Contemporaries also rated it as extraordinarily elaborate, rich and elaborate. The soups of the first course included a "Potage à la Victoria", a veal consommé garnished with blanched rooster combs , a "Potage à la Colbert", a vegetable soup with pea-sized, glazed Jerusalem artichoke balls and a "Potage à la Comte de Paris", a meat broth with ribbon noodles and quenelles made from chicken. Relevés included “Turbot à la Mazarin”, a poached turbot with a sauce made of butter and lobster roe, pan-fried trout in sherry sauce, fried whiting and wild salmon au gratin in a cream sauce. Entrées included roast turkey chicks , rabbits in currant sauce, capons with watercress, roast ducks with orange sauce, roast beef, mutton and saddle of lamb "à la Sévigné", which were served with veal dumplings, braised cucumber and asparagus puree. Among the more elaborate meat dishes served by Alexis Soyer , who was responsible for the banquet , were “Chapons à la Nelson”, capons stuffed with truffles and mushrooms in pastries shaped like the bow of a ship. Mashed potatoes were decorated in a wave shape around these pastry pies. The highlights of the first course included “Poulardes en Diadem”, a pastry pie shaped like a crown and filled with roasted chicken, boiled ox tongue and glazed sweetbreads . The top of the pastry was adorned with silver and gold skewers with crayfish, quenelles and truffles on top.

Second gear

Basic procedure and courts

The second course began after all or most of the dishes in the first course were cleared from the table. At this point, the top tablecloth was peeled off to reveal the fresh tablecloth underneath. The second course was the actual main course. The meat dishes were no longer ragouts or stews, but large pieces of meat that had often been roasted on a spit. From today's point of view, it is unusual that these large pieces of meat were not only accompanied by salads and vegetable dishes, but also by sweet dishes (so-called entremets ) such as creams, jellies and, in the 19th century, ice cream.

Not infrequently, individual dishes had their own entertainment value. Bartolomeo Scappi , one of the most famous cooks of the 16th century, created butter sculptures for a feast in the shape of an elephant, a Hercules with a lion and a Moor sitting on a camel. Such sculptures became rarer and less elaborate over the centuries. Examples such as the banquet in honor of Ibrahim Pasha from the mid-19th century show, however, that such elements could also appear later.

Examples of dishes served during the second course

Back in the early 18th century, guests of the Earl of Orkney were offered roast partridges and turkey as a second course. On the table there was also a fricassee of rooster combs and sweetbreads, pickled sole, thickened cream, apples, pears, confectionery, peeled walnuts and chestnuts.

In Father Woodforde's household, typical second course dishes were pigeons with asparagus, fillet of veal with mushrooms, roasted sweetbreads, lobster and an apricot tart. The center of the table was dominated by a pyramid of syllabub and jellies.

At the banquet in honor of Ibrahim Pascha in 1846, chicken, lamb, veal, rabbit, pies, ham braised in Madeira, lobster in curry sauce, salads and vegetable dishes such as peas and green beans in nut butter were served. Reform lamb chops, a trademark of Soyer and one of the most popular dishes in the Reform Club, were also served. Sweet dishes such as fruit jellies, ice cream, meringues , tartlets made from nougat and apricots or almonds and cherries were also served. This was followed by the “pièces montées”, elaborate works of art of the confectionery, with which a cook had to prove his imagination and skill. These desserts were often themed. A “crème d'Égypte à l'Ibrahim Pasha” was served, a pyramid-shaped, one-meter-high structure made of meringue in the form of a pyramid, which was filled with pineapple cream and on top of which was a replica of Muhammad Ali Pasha , the father of Ibrahim Pasha. A “Gâteau Britannique à l'Admiral” had also been created in honor of Admiral Napier , who hosted the banquet. The cake in the shape of a warship carrying the English and Egyptian flags was placed in front of Lord Napier, who, as host, was responsible for distributing the dessert filled with iced peach mousse and fresh fruit to the guests. However, the elaborate construction collapsed before Lord Napier had fulfilled his duties.

Third gear

The third course was initiated as before the second by clearing away all the food and removing the tablecloth. Either a tablecloth was again visible under the cleared one or the dishes of the third course were placed directly on the wood of the table, with each dish standing on a lace doily. Dessert plates, knives, forks and spoons were placed in front of the guests. But now primarily fruit, cheese, small sweets such as confectionery and small pastries were served. Among the dishes on offer, however, there could well be another hearty dish such as a meat pie.

The third course was the "dessert" course in the original sense of the word: the word dessert is derived from the French word "desservit" or "clearing up". In the 16th century, guests were offered perfumed toothpicks and fennel stalks to chew on with this course. Aniseed and mint confections should freshen your breath. All the dishes that were now offered were pure sweets.

literature

  • Kate Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2012, ISBN 9781-4088-34084 .
  • Dan Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. WW Norton & Company, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-393-24587-5 .
  • Margaret Visser: The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners . Penguin Books, New York, 1991, ISBN 0140170790 .

Single receipts

  1. ^ A b Jurafsky: The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. P. 25.
  2. ^ A b Visser: The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners . P. 198.
  3. ↑ Nichola Fletcher: Charlemagne's Tablecloth - A Piquant History of Feasting . Phoenix Paperback, London 2004, ISBN 0-75381-974-0 , p. 155.
  4. ↑ Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Chapter: Human Nature , ebook position 2797.
  5. ↑ a b c d Visser: The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Menaning of Table Manners . P. 201.
  6. ^ Visser: The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Menaning of Table Manners . P. 202.
  7. ↑ Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Chapter: Human Nature , ebook position 2779.
  8. ^ A b Visser: The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Menaning of Table Manners . P. 199.
  9. ↑ Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Chapter: Human Nature , ebook position 2788.
  10. ↑ Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Chapter: Brave Stomachs , ebook position 3256.
  11. ↑ Ruth Cowen: Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef , London 2006, ISBN 0-297-64562-5 , p. 71.
  12. ^ A b Ruth Cowen: Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef , London 2006, ISBN 0-297-64562-5 , p. 72.
  13. ↑ Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Chapter: Human Nature , ebook position 2788.
  14. ↑ Colquhoun: Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking . Chapter: Brave Stomachs , ebook position 3256.