Foods and Household Management: A Textbook of the Household ArtsKinne, Helen
General
Foods and Household Management: A Textbook of the Household Arts
Kinne, Helen
Cooking; Food; Home economics
=Waiting on the table.=——When we wait on ourselves, this should be done
with cheerfulness, and all should take a share. After the food is on the
table, one person can “help” one thing and one another. It is a good plan
for the young people of the family to take turns as waiter in removing the
soiled dishes and food and putting on the dessert. A quick method is to
place a tray on a small stand near the table, taking the dishes from one
place at a time, and sorting them on the tray as you go. The tray can then
be carried into the kitchen, with the dishes partly arranged for washing.
One mother uses a plan for having everybody help at breakfast time,
modeled after the tray system of a cafeteria. The breakfast is cooked
ready to serve, and on the kitchen table is a small tray for each one of
the family of four. All necessary articles are at hand, and even the boy
of seven sets his own tray and helps himself to food, and takes his place
at the table; and then when the meal is ended each one carries out his
dishes and puts them in neat array for washing.
The waitress at a formal meal has to be alert, rapid yet gentle in all her
motions, with a desire to make other people comfortable, and a faculty for
remembering their likes and dislikes. A good waitress does not pass a
second time a dish once declined.
The waitress must know the menu, and have everything ready for each course
at hand on the sideboard, with dishes kept hot in the hot closet.
The table is laid in time, she herself is immaculate, and the room is well
aired and the temperature agreeable. A piece of bread is folded in each
napkin. If the first course is cold,——perhaps a grapefruit,——she arranges
these at each place. If it is to be a hot bouillon, the cook tells her
that all is ready, and then she informs the hostess that dinner or
luncheon is served.
The details of this type of waiting vary with the place and the taste of
the hostess, but the following method is simple and rapid.
=Serving.=——Serve everything from the side table. Hold the dish to be
served firmly in two hands with a napkin underneath, a tablespoon and fork
being placed on the dish. Pass to the left of the guest, and hold the dish
at a convenient height and near the plate. After all the dishes in a
course are passed in this way, watch to see if second helps are needed.
Remove the soiled plates at the left, and place the clean at the left,
removing with the left hand and placing with the right.
Fill glasses at the right, and remove silver at the right before dessert
when there are pieces left unused.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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