I grew up in a 17-room house in Potsdam, which my father inherited from my grandmother. The dining room sported a huge fumed oak sideboard. Nowhere near as elegant and pretty as the early 19th century piece owned by Liberty Knowles and now on display in the Potsdam Public Museum, our sideboard contained our formal dishes and silver, and otherwise served as a serving platform at dinner. Our claw footed oak dining room table could be stretched from a modest round to an elongated oval seating a dozen or more comfortably for holiday dinners.
The early cookbooks are impressive, even when primitive by today’s standards. The recipes were simple, and assumed a fair amount of cooking knowledge. The better ones included explanations of weights and measures, of substitutions and equivalents, and of oven temperatures. Bear in mind that our grandmothers cooked on a wood or coal stove. Maintaining the right temperature was an art form, and watching closely the progress of the item being prepared was absolutely essential.
Having grown up with the old stoves, I would love to have a kitchen big enough today to contain one. The wood stove made the kitchen the best room in the house in any season but summer. The large country kitchen table was the primary food preparation space, as well as a place to sit and share the gossip and news of the day.
Today we would consider the wood stove just too primitive for words, just too time consuming for the modern mother or for the couple holding down one or two jobs each. Consider, then, the labor indications for a large dinner, as set out in The Malone Cook-Book, produced by the Woman’s Aid Society of the First Congregational Church in Malone, NY. A remarkably successful book for its time and now, The Malone Cook-Book went through at least six editions by 1917, including an edition for the blind.
How to set the table – in 1917
"The first requisites for a dinner are fine damask, and bright silver. We cannot all have cut glass and delicate china, but he table linen can always be snowy white, and the silver shining. These, with a center piece of flowers or fruit, will make a table pleasing to the eye.
A cover signifies the place laid at table for each person, and should consist of the number of knives and forks required for the courses, a large spoon for soup, a glass for water, and a butter plate, if butter is served. The knives and forks should always be placed on the right and left of the plates, never across the table. Glasses at the right, kept filled by the waitress.
The dinner napkin is placed at the left of the plate. On the theory that a guest should never be without a plate before him, some use a “place plate” on which is set the oyster and soup plates and which is removed with the soup course. The waitress brings the plate for the next course when she removes the plate of the preceding course. If even with one waitress it is easier to serve many of the courses from the buffet. After the hors d’oeuvre which is at each place when the guests e3nter the room, the soup may be served by the hostess or from the side. At formal dinners, the meats may be carved by the host, or they be carved outside, and passed by the waitress—always served at the left of each person.
Fish is served next accompanied by boiled potatoes cut in round balls, browned, and used to garnish the fish, and cucumbers sliced with French dressing. (Fish should always be cut with a silver knife.) An entrée—sweet breads, croquettes, etc. passed by the waitress.
Then come the relevée, or substantial dishes, roast beef, lamb, mutton, turkey or chicken, etc.
Any and all vegetables are served with beef. Lamb calls for green peas and spinach. Turkey, cranberry sauce, onions, tomatoes, potatoes. Chickens are accompanied by rice and cauliflower. Pork, and roast goose must always be accompanied by fried apples, or apple sauce, sweet potatoes, and turnips. After the roasts at an elaborate dinner, sherbet follow; then game and salad.
Salad can be served with the game or by itself, accompanied by cheese. This latter is often made a course by itself, and served just before the dessert. The present style is to serve each dish by itself. Only one, or at most two vegetables, are served at one course, and many are made a course by themselves, as asparagus, macaroni, etc.
After the salads and cheese come the ices and sweet dishes, bonbons, etc., followed by coffee.
For hot meat courses, entrées, etc., hot plates are used; cold ones for salad, cold meats, and hot puddings, which retain their own heat.
If the knives and forks at first laid are not sufficient, a fresh fork or knife and fork, is set before each person on a fresh plate.
Vegetables are always eaten with a fork, save asparagus, which may be taken in the fingers. Salads, croquettes, etc., cheese and most fruits are eaten with a fork, also ices and many puddings, the knife being used only when absolutely necessary. Spoons are used for preserves, custards, berries, in fact for whatever dishes are too liquid to be managed with a fork.
Before dessert everything is removed from the table except the cloth, which is brused with a napkin, as being more noiseless than a brush or scraper, and dessert spoons, forks, or whatever is to be required placed at each place. The finger bowls come with the fruit.
The present style is to shorten the dinner. Five courses for an informal and seven or eight for a formal are considered quite sufficient. Many substitute an appetizer called a canapé made of anchovies, caviars, etc., for the oysters.
First Course—Hors d’oeuvres
Second Course—Soup
Third Course—Fish or entrées
Fourth Course—The roast with potatoes and one vegetable.
Fifth Course—A punch followed by the game or salad with cheese and bread and butter sandwiches or toasted crackers. Many serve the bird and salad together thus combining a game and salad course.
Sixth Course-Ices or puddings.
Seventh Course—Fruit, bon-bons, etc., with coffee. Coffee is frequently served in the drawing room.
It is very simple to prepare a dinner “a la Russe,” the many dishes do not have to be hot and in perfection at the same minute, and served all together, but each succeeding course can be prepared while the other is being served and eaten. For a “tea party,” or, in city parlance, “high tea” the coffee and tea equipages stand before the hostess. The table may be ornamented with fruit and flowers, but not in the formal fashion of a dinner party. Preserves may stand on the table in glass dishes.
Fried oysters, croquettes, chops and green peas, omelet and cold meats of various kinds may be served by the host. Vegetable and other salads are always welcome, and hot bread and coffee indispensable.
Bouillon often forms a first course. With bouillon a large teaspoon is provided."
