A guide to modern cookery

served resembled the Zakouski in name alone, and consisted of cold and very ordinary hors-d’œuvres, served at the dining-table itself. At length the absurdity of investing such common things as hors-d’œuvres with an exotic title began to be perceived, and nowadays the occasions are rare when the Russian term is to be found on a menu; nevertheless, the custom unfortunately survives. For my own part, I regard cold hors-d’œuvres as quite unnecessary in a dinner; I even consider them counter to the dictates of common sense, and they are certainly prejudicial to the flavour of the soup that follows. At the most, caviare might be tolerated, the nutty taste of which, when it is quite fresh, can but favourably impress the consumer’s palate, as also certain fine oysters, provided they be served with very dry Rhine wine or white Bordeaux. But I repeat that hors-d’œuvres consisting of any kind of fish, salad, _marinaded_ vegetables, &c., should be strictly proscribed from the items of a dinner. The custom of serving cold hors-d’œuvres at lunch is, on the contrary, not only traditional, but indispensable, and their varied combinations, thrown into relief by tasteful and proper arrangement, besides lending a cheerful aspect to the table, beguile the consumer’s attention and fancy from the very moment of his entering the dining-room. It has been said, with reason, that soups should foretell the dominant note of the whole dinner, and cold hors-d’œuvres should in the same way reveal that of a luncheon. Possibly it was with a sense of the importance of hors-d’œuvres, from this standpoint, that their preparation was transferred from the _office_ (the exclusive concern whereof used, formerly, to be the hors-d’œuvres) to the kitchen. The results of this change manifested themselves immediately in prodigious variations and transformations of the hors-d’œuvres, both in respect of their preparation and dishing-up, so much so, indeed, that perhaps in no other department of culinary art has there been such progress of recent years. Their variety is infinite, and it would be impossible to compute, even approximately, the number of combinations an ingenious artist could effect in