Cassell's dictionary of cookery

We have before called attention to the fact that in nearly all private houses at dinner-parties the game is invariably over-cooked. What cooks should do, is to endeavour to learn by experience. For instance, let every cook, when she sends up the soup, look at the kitchen clock — suppose the dinner is for ten persons, and that it consists of soup, fish, four entries, two joints, and game. Let her then again look at the kitchen clock when the game is asked for, and act accordingly another PRINCIPLES SERVING DINNER. b time. It is quite impossible to lay down any exact rule for the length of a dinner, which indeed varies, some houses being always — I don't know why — quicker than others. Perhaps the difference is dependent on the host's conversational powers. The success of dinner very much depends upon the forethought of those who wait. First, let the cloth be laid a good hour before dinner, and let the waiter remember this one great principle of success — Let everything be in the room that is possible beforehand. No dinner can be successful when the waiter or waitress has first to run down-stairs to get some more bread, then to disappear again for the red-currant jelly to hand with the mutton, or the mustard with the beef, and so on through dinner. It is so easy to look ahead. Again, it is shocking bad management to have to open fresh sherry in the middle of dinner. If champagne be served, either have enough or don't give any. I consider one bottle of champagne sent round for eight or ten persons far worse than giving none at all. Have also the wires of the champagne bottles taken off beforehand : it saves time. It also saves time to put a good-sized piece of bread to each person at starting. It is quite ridiculous to see what small pieces of bread, or what tiny little rolls, are put round at some houses. Some persons' dinners are quite spoilt for want of bread, and bread is one of those things that even good waiters are very apt to forget to hand of their own accord. It is not pleasant at dinner, unless you are very intimate with the people, to have to ask for things. Let each person remember in how many instances their dinner has been spoilt by the want of bread, and at any rate iresolve that in their own houses they will take precautions not to spoil the dinners of their guests. It is a good plan to tell the waiter to hand round some bread eai'ly in the dinner, and have it cut up, some large pieces, and some small. Some persons are what may be termed greedy bread-eaters, and by this means you give them a chance to help themselves. It is exceedingly annoying to have a nice piece of partridge or woodcock getting cold on one's plate, and to see it and smell it while waiting for bread. It will always, too, be advisable to have the bread so kept that it is what may be called a happy medium between being too new and too dry. New bread should never be eaten with meat, as it is exceedingly indigestible. The meat in sandwiches which is cut from new bread is apt to turn bad very quickly, and it will be found that new bread eaten at dinner has the unamiable tendency of causing the dinner to disagree.