Little dinners : how to serve them with elegance and economy / by Mary Hooper.

  • Mary Hooper
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Little dinners : how to serve them with elegance and economy / by Mary Hooper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Ill winter, pears of the best growth—observing that two of the very large kind are enough for a dish—with apples and nuts make a good and sufficient dessert. Plain biscuits should always he on the table, in the biscuit canister of- glass or silver. It is customary for coffee to be served before the ladies rise from the table. It should he sent up in very small cups, without cream or milk, and without being too strong be really cafe, noir. After this, a small glass of eau-de-vie or liqueur may be offered ; and the last will be more readily accepted if the host can give some little history of it, or say it was made by the hostess or under her superintendence. In concluding these few observations let me beg all to remember that the excellence of a dinner does not depend on its costliness, but on the degree of care given to its arrangement and preparation. A kind-hearted and hos- pitable hostess can invest ordinary things with so much grace that her guests will rise from a small, well- served, inexpensive dinner with a sense of satisfaction wanting to many a costly banquet. In dispensing hos- pitality it should always he borne in mind that, in giving of the best according to our means, we greatly enhance its value by the practical evidence of good will which is siiown in the trouble taken to insure the pleasure of our guests. In the quaint words of an old poet:— Such a host, my friend, expends much more In oil than cotton; solely studying love!
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