The Dinner Menu

The regular home dinner should consist of soup, a substantial dish, as meat, poultry or fish, one or two vegetables, a salad, a sweet and coffee. A carefully prepared entrée after the pièce de résistance adds to the variety and style of the meal. If this be fashioned of some "left over," which even careful management cannot entirely eliminate, it tends to diminish the quantity of the main dish of the meal - and usually the most expensive article in the menu. The style of serving the home dinner must of necessity depend largely upon the style of living. When the mother is assisted by only one maid, steps need be considered, and serving from the side is evidently quite out of the question, even if the maid be able to carve.

The soup in soup plate may be brought in on the service plate just before the family are seated. This obviates the use of a second service or change plate, a necessity when any one save an expert passes soup in the dining room. While the soup is being eaten, the maid dishes the roast and vegetables and brings in the roast, the table having been laid with a carving cloth and cutlery. She retires with two soup plates and brings in from the warming oven the required number of dinner plates, which she sets down directly in front or at the left of the server, then she removes to a side table the rest of the soup plates, two at a time. Plates in a pile are considered a breach of perfect table service, and is a concession to existing circumstances.

When the maid waits upon the table five days in the week, a routine suitable to that particular family can be easily mastered by both family and maid, to the end that each shall know what is to be expected.

While the meat is being carved and passed to the older members of the family, the maid brings in two vegetables on a tray, a tablespoon in each, and passes the tray to the left of each individual. She now sets the tray on the side table and, when the meat for the children is cut, places the vegetables allowed them on the plates, cuts the meat in small bits and sets them before the children. Where the maid cannot carry or hold the plate safely on the flat of the hand, with a folded napkin between, it should be carried on a tray. This course finished, the plates are removed, two at a time, to a side table, where, when opportunity offers, the silver is noiselessly collected on a tray and the plates are piled to be taken to the kitchen. The salad, kept until this time in a cool place, is now placed before the mistress, the plates as before, the salad spoon on the right, the fork on the left; the filled plates are set down before those at table from the right, and later on removed, one at a time, from the right to the side table. Remove the salad dish, salt, etc., on a tray, brush the crumbs, and set the dessert before the mistress (this, if not an ice, or a dish served hot or chilled, may have been standing on the sideboard), put the plates in place, as also a spoon for serving. Set the prepared plates down from the right, pass sauce or sugar and cream on a tray to the left. Then bring in the coffee, made after the serving of the salad, on a tray with cups and saucers. Set the coffee service before the mistress from the right, and pass the cups of coffee, then the sugar and cream on a small tray, if these are served, or if the mother does not add them. If finger-bowls be used, set these in place, from the right, one third filled with tepid water and standing on a plate with a doily between; pass bonbons, fill the glasses, and retire. On occasion, the dessert plates might be removed before passing coffee and finger-bowls, but generally, with dishes to wash and her own dinner to get ready, this will not be required. Finger-bowls with children at table are a necessity rather than a luxury.

With more maids, the nearer the approach may be to the service of the formal dinner.

As the Thursday night dinner and the Sunday night tea are often prepared and served without the assistance of a maid, everything should be in readiness beforehand and a menu selected that will admit of as many dishes as possible being placed either on the table, or on a side table, before the family is called. Then, if one of the family quietly removes the meal course with its attendant dishes, brushes the crumbs, and, after the salad has been considered, attends to the passing of the dessert, brings in boiling water and sets the coffee, tea or cocoa service in place, the meal may be daintily served to the satisfaction of all. The making of the beverage, or cooking of an article upon the chafing dish, will give variety and add a charm to the meal that will amply compensate for loss in some other features of the service.