A History of Mealtimes and More

 

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, courses were not served separately; several dishes would be set on the table together as part of one “remove.” A dinner might involve three “removes,” and a banquet, many more.
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The “Removes,” a popular Gilded Age dinner course, is the most confusing of courses.“The Removes” or “Remove” wasn’t originally referring to a food. Its name was merely referencing the time used to remove and switch out side dishes and crumb the table perhaps, in the preparation for the inexplicably named, “Second Main Course” (an oxymoron — which sounds like poor grammar to us at Etiquipedia), or the British “Roast Course.” 

The Changeable Hours of Mealtime

The excepted normal hours for eating varied from century to century and from country to country, and indeed they have varied, and still vary to some degree, in each individual household.


By the 16th century the French and Italians had developed elaborate, highly season dishes. English fare, by comparison, was simple, although just as hearty. The Elizabethan table was a gargantuan display of meat, bird, fowl, and vegetables, and special dishes like salmagundi and peacock pâté.


In those days dinner was served to the upper classes at about 11 o’clock in the morning and was the day’s main meal. Supper, usually the only other meal, might appear at about 5 o’clock p.m. It was considered smart to dine early, for the working classes, and some merchants, ate later in the day.


There are also references to people breaking their fast earlier in the morning before going on a long journey, or if they were ill, and to certain ladies in London, who “break their fast in their beds”. On occasions there were also snacks in between of bread, butter, milk, and cheese with ale or beer, that extended to “rear suppers... when it was time to go to rest.”


Travelers ate at the inns— “ordinaries“ —which supplied an assortment of snacks for those who did not bring their own food along. There were no restaurants, even in London, but one could buy pies and prepare dishes from the cooked-meat shop.


From the 16th to the 19th centuries, courses were not served separately; several dishes would be set on the table together as part of one “remove.” A dinner might involve three “removes,” and a banquet many more.


Silver, pewter, and wooden platters were used, and the same one kept throughout the meal. Some wooden platters, flat ones, were turned over for another “remove.” Poorer people used a thick slice of bread (or trenchers) to set their food on. This absorbed the juices and was eaten at the end of the meal.


There were many changes in English and American eating habits before the present pattern began to evolve at the turn of the 20th century. Dinner, the chief meal of the day, is ordinarily thought of as the evening meal. This was not always so. In some European countries the main meal is still taken mid-day, while in others – particularly Spain —it is eaten after 10:00 p.m.


In the 17th century, the day began with a good, healthy breakfast. This was followed by a heavy noonday meal, served at about 1 or 2 o’clock, and a comparatively light supper. In America, the custom of eating supper (usually three or four hours after tea) was in keeping with the English practice of earlier decades. Among the fare served to the settlers at suppertime, we read of such tidbits, mentioned by Jean McClure in her booklet, “Early American Table Settings,” as “hogs ears forced, pickled pigs feet and ears, ox-Palates.”


In farmhouse is on both sides of the Atlantic, tables were “set out” with all the food at once, but in the village, the squire’s wife “set out two courses” in English fashion. In city homes, the two courses were extremely elaborate and offered great variety.


This habit of covering the table with platters of food was not so that each person would sample everything, but so that each would find something to his taste. Since it was considered ungenteel at the time for the ladies to drink more than one glass of wine, they retired to the drawing room or parlor, after the desert course. Later, the gentleman join them for tea or coffee.– Patricia Easterbrook Roberts, 1967

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia