Hey, guys.
Got this info off another list.
It's VERY interesting.
Becky
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dena Polston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Patricia"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 4:06 PM
Subject: RE: C n D: British dining 18th century
Hi Listers,
I am doing a little research and came across this article from Google. Hope
you find it as interesting as I did.
AT TABLE: HIGH STYLE IN THE 18TH CENTURY
The objects used to lay a table spoke volumes about the host's standing in
society
by Sarah Nichols
In the 18th century, the pleasures of the table reached new gastronomic
heights with
the discovery of different and exotic foods and spices, and the creation of
new recipes.
Visually the table became more exciting and elaborate with new serving
dishes such
as tureens, sauceboats, and centerpieces to present the new recipes. In
Europe, new
porcelain factories competed with silver and goldsmiths to supply large and
elaborate
dinner and dessert services to the courts of Europe, and a growing number of
glass
factories florished as wine glasses found their way onto the table. In this
century,
for the first time the dining room became a clearly defined space within a
house
dedicated to one particular purpose-the service and enjoyment of food and
all the
pomp and circumstance that can surround it.
Just as today, with the spectrum of dining ranging from the T.V. dinner and
fast
food grazing to the formalities of Thanksgiving dinner and special events,
dining
in the 18th century was hierarchical and stratified by economic background
and the
type of occasion. For example, at the Court of Versailles, Louis XIV's
dining possibilities
ranged from the heights of "the Royal Feast" through five variations of "le
grand
couvert" ("the large placesetting") and two of "le petit couvert," each with
added
nuances of informality.
Louis XIV's Court at Versailles established the formal customs of dining
throughout
18th century Europe via le service à la française (the French method of
serving),
which became universally accepted as the only civilized fashion of dining.
In the
French manner, at each course all the different dishes were placed on the
table at
the same time and in exactly prescribed locations. The diners would help
themselves
to whatever was near at hand without moving the dishes, and if necessary
pass their
plates to their neighbors to get food that was out of their reach. At large
dinners
this meant that it was impractical for guests to sample all the dishes, so
it was
important to have an interesting selection of foods near each guest.
A 1760 painting by Martin Van Mytens shows the feast given at the Hofburg
Palace
in Vienna before the marriage of the future Joseph II to Princess Isabelle
of Parma,
and it gives a wonderful sense of royal dining à la française at the most
formal
level. As with other aspects of royal daily life in the 18th century, such
as at
the levée (the ritual of getting up in the morning) aristocratic courtiers
were required
to watch these formal meals. In the painting, the Austrian royal family sits
on a
raised dias very much as though on stage. Servants number more than one per
guest,
an abundance that was typical at such state banquets. More modest households
aimed
for a ratio of one servant to four guests, and it was not unusual for guests
to come
with their own footmen to make up the shortfall. The function of the
servants was
to pass around the oil and vinegar and bread, and to replenish the drinking
glasses
after washing them at the sideboard fountain and cistern. It was considered
extremely
bad form for the servants to serve the diners or to disturb the dishes once
the table
was set.
The house steward, the servant in overall charge of the household, was
responsible
for devising the menu and drawing up the table plan for the placement of the
dishes.
Other servants crucial for the success of a grand dinner were the butler,
responsible
for the wine cellar, all the silver and plates, serving the meal and
supervising
the conduct and efficiency of the footmen; the clerk of the kitchen,
responsible
for ordering all the provisions; and the head cook. In France, extremely
important
feasts attended by the king might have had up to eight courses including
dessert,
and so last many hours. In England, even the most formal dinners seem to
have been
concentrated into three courses including dessert, after which the ladies
retired
to the drawing room for tea and the men remained behind for drinking.
But even an English dinner could be a long, drawn-out affair, as the author
of Apician
Morsels or Tales of the table, kitchen, and larder wrote in 1829: "Five
hours at
the dinner table are a reasonable latitude when the company is numerous and
no lack
of good cheer." At a grand dinner, each course should have the same number
of dishes,
as Elizabeth Raffald pointed out in The Experienced English Housekeeper,
published
in 1769: "As many dishes as you have in one course, so many baskets or
plates your
dessert must have, and as my bill of fare is tweny-five to each course, so
must your
dessert be of the same number and set out in the same manner," so making a
total
of 75 dishes. The York Courant in 1767 reported that Sir William Lowther
offered
180 dishes at a party at Flatt Hall. That night, the house steward, butler,
clerk
of the kitchen and cook had their work cut out for them.
The first course usually consisted of soups and stews, vegetables and boiled
fish
and meats arranged around a grand centerpiece. As the first course neared
its conclusion
the servants brought in the "remove" dishes, such as impressive dishes of
meat or
fish. These were placed at each end of the table and intended as
conversation pieces
and as a way of spanning the lengthy time it took to replace all the first
course
dishes with those for the second course. The second course consisted of
vegetables,
meats and fish, with the addition of exotic pies, such as peacock, and other
savoury
baked fare such as gumballs and cheese wigs. (Gumballs were made from eggs,
sugar,
flour, butter, mace, aniseed and carroway seeds mixed together to form a
paste, which
was then baked. Cheese wigs were small bread buns coated with cheese sauce
so they
ressembled the shape of a wig resting on a wig stand.1
The second course dishes would be laid out in exactly the same arrangement
as those
from the first. Another "remove" dish-perhaps a mock boar's head made of
sponge cake-would
rekindle the guests' interest in the final course, dessert-the crowning
glory of
a grand dinner, as recent recreations using 18th-century recipes and
tablewares show.
Elaborate desserts were in vogue in the 18th century. As Horace Walpole
wrote in
1750, "all the geniuses of the age are employed in designing new plans for
dessert."
Gardens, architecture and pastoral scenes were evoked firstly in sugar and
then in
porcelain to provide a backdrop for the fresh and sugared fruits,
sweetmeats, jams,
jellies and creams. Sometimes such excesses overwhelmed the guests as was
the case
with a dessert table prepared by the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, as
described by
William Farington in 1756:
After a very Elligant Dinner of a great many dishes...The Table was Prepar'd
for
Dessert which was a Beautiful Park, round the Edge was a Plantation of
Flowering
Shrubs, and in the middle a Fine piece of water with Dolphins Spouting out
water,
and Deer dispersed Irregularly over the Lawn, on the Edge of the Table was
all Iced
Creams, and wet and dried Sweetmeats, it was such a Piece of work it was all
left
on the Table till we went to Coffee.2
A large household would employ a confectioner whose sole task was to prepare
the
sweetmeats and sugar sculptures for the dessert course. Smaller households
such as
Viscount Fairfax's in York would make use of independent chefs. In 1763
Fairfax held
a party for 18 people to celebrate the completion of his magnificent York
townhouse.
The invoice for the dessert course shows he paid a staggering 16 pounds (the
housekeeper's
wage for the year was only 11 pounds) to the city chef William Baker for
five pyramids
of wet and dry sweetmeats, which included the rental of the glass and other
structures
necessary for the display of this extravaganza. Monsieur Seguin, a French
confectioner
and longtime resident of York, supplied the various sweetmeats.3
In the 18th century, as before and since, the objects used to lay a table
spoke volumes
about the host's standing in society. As one Mrs. Papendieck, the wife of a
minor
court official and one of the "middling ranks," wrote in 1783 on the
occasion of
her marriage: "our tea and coffee service were of common India China, our
dinner
service of earthenware, to which, for our rank, there was nothing superior,
Chelsea
porcelain and fine India China being only for the wealthy. Pewter and delft
ware
could be had but were inferior." Silver, gold and European porcelains from
such factories
as Sèvres and Meissen favored by royal and aristocratic patrons are not
mentioned-probably
because they were beyond Mrs. Papendieck's everyday experiences. On the
other hand,
at the wedding feast in the Hofburg Palace in 1760, everything on the
table-the tureens,
plates, individual salt boxes and cutlery-is either gold or silver gilt.
A large porcelain dinner and dessert service was often considered a suitable
gift
from a king to an ambassador or fellow monarch. Such services, like the
famous Swan
Service made by Meissen from 1737 to 1741 for Count Bruhl, might consist of
more
than 2,000 pieces. When production of the Copenhagen Porcelain Factory's
Flora Danica
Service suddenly stopped in 1802, it numbered 1,802 pieces. The service was
originally
intended for Catherine the Great of Russia, so the Danish crown took over
the service
after her death in 1796 and increased the order for the number of place
settings
from 80 to 100. Porcelain was ideally suited to the dessert course, as the
decoration
and forms could easily reflect the naturalist and Arcadian themes that
dominated
the dessert. All the pieces in the Flora Danica service, not just the
dessert items,
were painted with single flowers in a rigorous botanical style. The great
Meissen
service presented by Augustus III of Saxony to the British ambassador Sir
Charles
Hanbury-Williams in 1745 included dessert dishes in the form of artichokes,
laurel
leaves and sunflowers, and 166 figures of which 54 were pastoral in theme
and 34
connected to the hunt. Such porcelain figures replaced those originally made
in sugar.
The rules and customs associated with dining have changed over the years,
but Anthelme
Brillat Savarin's maxims for dining published in the early 19th century
still hold
true: "When you invite a man to dinner, never forget, that during the short
time
he is under your roof his happiness is in your hands."
Sarah Nichols is the curator of decorative arts at Carnegie Museum of Art.
Notes
1. Recipes for gumballs and cheese wigs are included in an 18th-century
manuscript
belonging to the Fairfax family of York, England.
2. Sykes, C. S. Private Palaces, London, 1985.
3. Brown, Peter. Pyramids of Pleasure, York, 1990.
Listen or download previous Cooking in the Dark Shows at:
http://www.cookinginthedark.libsyn.com
Got a pod catcher? Here is the address to paste into your pod catcher for
Cooking in the Dark:
http://www.cookinginthedark.libsyn.com/rss
Cooking in the Dark is sponsored by Blind Mice Mart!
http://www.blindmicemart.com
The Cooking in the Dark Show is streamed weekly on the internet.
Visit the Cooking in the Dark page at Blind
Mice Mart for times and links.
Every purchase at Blind Mice Mart funds the Mouse Hole Scholarship Program
providing scholarships for Blind students!
http://www.BlindMiceMart.com
Use the coupon code "acbradio" when you check-out at Blind Mice Mart and a
portion of your purchase will be donated to ACB Radio and you will save a
little change too!
Visit the Cooking and Baking Department at Blind Mice Mart and get some of
the same products Dale uses on the show!
Recipes posted on this list serve are the property of Blind Mice Mart and
Cooking in the Dark. Reproduction without permission is not permitted.
Cooking in the Dark and Blind Mice Mart are copyrighted trademarks of Blind
Mice Inc.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Access the Recipes And More list archives at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/recipesandmore%40googlegroups.com/
Visit the group home page at:
http://groups.google.com/group/RecipesAndMore
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
