Volume 2

Katharine Mellish's Cookery and domestic management, including economic & middle class practical cookery / by Katharine Mellish.

  • Mellish, Katharine.
Date:
[1901]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Katharine Mellish's Cookery and domestic management, including economic & middle class practical cookery / by Katharine Mellish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    485/522 (page 955)
    Meat and vegetables and cold sweets are put on together at luncheon. Sometimes servants do not wait at all at lunch, but the more general way, after the bell or gong has sounded, is to come in to remove the covers, and sometimes to hand round the first plates and vegetables ; but, unless there are young children, the middle course is best—that the servant should follow the family into the room, remove the covers, and depart. Every one prefers waiting on themselves at luncheon, as chatty gossip is more usual than at dinner ; and besides, the luncheon hour of the family is commonly the dinner hour of the servants. Unless there is a hot pudding that will spoil if not served just when it is wanted, there is no need to ring the bell until lunch is finished ; and a thought- ful woman will order luncheon with a regard to her servants not having to be rung up. For lunch, tumblers as well as wine glasses are placed for each person. It is quite wrong to place tumblers for the late dinner on the table, but at lunch it is quite right, because there is no waiting. The wine glasses, either two or three, should be grouped close together, the tallest a little from the right side of the tip of the large knife, and the tumbler below the wine glasses. The wine decanters for lunch should be quarts, and, if possible, placed on each side of the centre crease of the tablecloth, either behind the top dish or the bottom dish. If this is not possible on account of the varying rules for arranging the lunch table, then put them at the corners. Sometimes for luncheon two water bottles are enough, and then cut cheese, or sifted sugar, or rolled butter, or preserves can be put at cross corners opposite the water bottles. Ale, either in a jug, or bottled ale, can be placed on the sideboard ; and it is not at all the wrong thing to place it on the table, for ale jugs can be very ornamental, and, if it is bottled beer, the cork must be drawn, an ornamental cork put in, and the bottle placed in a silver hock-stand, either on the sideboard or the table. An ale bottle is washed before the cork is drawn, so should be a claret bottle, or any other bottle that is not to be decanted, champagne included. Sometimes it is necessary that hot puddings should come up after lunch has been half finished, and in bringing the pudding, and removing other things, of course a little rearrangement of the table is required. Supposing, too, that the meat has to go down to the kitchen as soon as every one is helped, then the servant should not leave the place vacant that the meat has occupied, but rearrange the dishes so that some other fills its place before she leaves the room. Where there are young children whose dinner is at lunch time, the arrange- ments must of course be different. These arrangements depend so entirely on the number in the household, and the ages of the children, that no decided rules can be laid down. But in every case an early dinner ought always to be laid luncheon fashion, as otherwise it can never be laid prettily. What can be more bare and ungraceful than an early dinner laid in most respects as a dinner, yet with none of the accessories that make either lunch or dinner pretty. If the children are very young they require waiting on ; but for older school-room