I love reading old instruction manuals that reveal just how different the mentatility and perspective can be when discussing something relatively familiar- like a summer dinner- if things like time period and social class differ. While looking for summer dinner ideas I came across this book, written in 1887, on Manners and Social Usages in the United States. Some choice quotes from the summer dinner section:
“There is a season when the lingerers in town accept with pleasure an invitation to the neighboring country house, where the lucky suburban tit likes to entertain his friends. It is to be doubted, however, whether hospitality is an unmixed pleasure to those who extend it.”
“As the dinners of the opulent, who have butler, waiters, French cook, etc., are quite able to take care of themselves, we prefer to answer the inquiries of those of our correspondents who live in a simple manner, with two or three servants…”
At the same time, I find that there are often genuinely good ideas for aesthetically pleasing meals and interesting foods in these manuals, even if they need some tweaking to fit in to the current style. For example:
“Now for the ornamentation of the dinner. Let it be of flowers—wild ones, if possible, grasses, clovers, buttercups, and a few fragrant roses or garden flowers. There is no end to the cheap decorative china articles that are sold now for the use of flowers. A contemporary mentions orchids placed in baskets on the shoulders of Arcadian peasants; lilies-of-the-valley, with leaves as pale as their flowers, wheeled in barrows by Cupids or set in china slippers…”
Granted, barrows
wheeled by cupids might be going a bit far, but I like the idea of fun
flower holders that add to the decoration of the table.
posted at 15:31 on Sun, 04 Jun, 2006 |
path: /living
All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.