ENTRÉES.
Every dish should be as daintily served and decorated as is consistent with its nature, and with the least amount of handling. Any garnish that suggests the “pawing” (I can use no more refined phrase) of one’s food is distasteful, and no amount of so-called decoration will make up to the connois- seur for the repulsion such dishes evoke! Some years ago there was a craze (American I believe in origin) for coloured dinners, when every dish had to bear its share of a certain fixed scheme of colour. Now, such an idea is all very well when the colour chosen can be obtained naturally, as, say, a red and green, or a brown and cream mixture; but when it comes to the host’s liveries, or the hostess’s toilette being matched by the menu, it is carrying the idea too far, and is an atrocity one must admit, sorrow- fully, that women alone could have inaugurated. Their food is far too serious a thing with men to put it at the mercy of any colouring bottles, however harmless. For savoury dishes, red, brown, cream, green of various shades, and yellow, can all be pro- duced readily by the use of various vegetables, eggs, milk, etc., not to mention prawns, caviare, olives, etc., without dragging in all kinds of extraneous matter, tasteless at best, but very often utterly subversive of the original dish to which they are added.
Finally, a few words must be said with regard to réchauffés, from which some of the daintiest, if also the homeliest entrées can be produced. The great secret in preparing these is care. The British cook reads réchauffé, and correctly too as far as that