Service à la française is the practice of serving various dishes of a meal at the same time, with the diners helping themselves from the serving dishes. That contrasts to service à la russe in which d
Table layout for the second course, in Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, 4th Edition, 1775. Identifiable dishes include three mammal species, four birds, and four of fishes and seafood.
The medieval predecessor of service à la française in the 1410s, Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Reconstruction of middle-class table set for eight, around 1800
An entremet or entremets in Medieval French cuisine referred to dishes served between the courses of the meal, often illusion foods and edible scenic displays. The term additionally referred to perfor
Service à la française
…1651 in La Varenne’s Le Cuisinier françois. The Classical meal is composed of five stages: potage, entrée (including hors d’œuvres and relevés), roast, entremets (savory and sweet), and dessert. Each stage is characterized by certain types of dishes largely unique to that stage, each distinguished from the other…
Early entremets usually consisted of nothing more complicated than frumenty, a type of grain porridge, colored with saffron or egg yolk.
The staging of an elaborate entremet at the banquet of Charles V in 1378; illumination from Grandes Chroniques, late 14th century.
A serving of boar's head, a popular form of entremet. The image of the boar caught with an apple in its mouth was possibly among the first dishes to attempt an imitation of a live animal.
Floris Claesz. van Dyck 001