Service à la russe
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Service à la russe is a style of serving food in which dishes are brought to the table sequentially and served separately to each guest. Service à la russe was developed in France in the 19th century
Cover (place setting) for a formal or semi-formal dinner of 6 courses served à la russe: oysters, soup, fish, entrée, roast, and dessert. The entrée served in this meal does not require a knife and is eaten with a fork only. Dessert flatware is brought to the table with the dessert plate. For a meal with more courses, additional flatware would be brought to the table at the time the dish is served. (Lida Seely. Mrs. Seely’s Cook Book, 1902.)
Service à la française
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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
Service à la russe
…the 19th century by adapting traditional Russian table service to existing French gastronomic principles. The new service slowly displaced the older service à la française ('service in the French style'), in which a variety of dishes are placed on the table in an impressive display of tureens, platters, and other serving…
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