Page 33 - Studio International - September 1974

as well as knives. Inversely correlated with rank combination for course one, except that always served straight from cooking vessels on
is the progressive segregation of liquids from everything is sweet. There is more freedom to to plates. Pattern making is not at all required or
solids as the meals become less important. On serve one element and omit another from the even appropriate for the first course. A third
weekdays this clear ranking in order of three prototypes of Christmas pudding, trifle difference is that the liquid dressing of the
importance does not govern the times of serving. and fruit tart. The puddings vary very freely second course is thicker than that for the first.
At first sight the sequence of meals is a matter of upon the theme of cereal, fruit and cream: on We find that these three differences between
convenience. On an ordinary weekday when the the one hand the fruit may be diminished to a course one and course two themselves become
family assemble after work, they sit down to thin layer of jam or a streak of colour in the jelly reinforced in course three so that their effect is
meal C at 4.30 pm, have their main meal soon of a trifle, which consists mostly of juice-soaked of themes which extend over all the courses.
after 6 pm and meal B at 9 or io pm. On a cake and custard, and it may disappear completely
Sunday, however, a match between the time in a rice pudding. On the other hand the fruit
sequence and the rank order is to be seen. The may dominate over everything else as in the fruit
table 1, below, shows that the pattern has to be pie, or the cereal may be omitted as in tinned
observed at least across the week and does not fruit and custard. Whether the cereal be omitted
appear in any weekday sequence in its full on a weekday second course or not, the
significance, still less in any single meal. Christmas Day pattern is staple, centre (fruit)
and two dressings (brandy and cream) and in the
case of a common meal the most simplified
formula is centrepiece and dressing. The liquid
dressing, the custard or cream, is poured over
the plate in the same way as the liquid dressing,
gravy, is used in the first course. When this
course is nearly finished preparations are made
for the third part of the meal, the hot drink and
biscuits. Hitherto only cold water has been
drunk with the food. The variations of liquid
and solid are carried out upon the plate of food.
Now, in the third course, a total segregation of It is no surprise to the native Englishman that
liquids from solids appears : in the cup is the hot the distinction between hot and cold is much
In one of the four families the father came home brown drink, on the plate the cold dry solid, a valued in this dietary system. For the third
for his midday meal, but whether he did or not reversal of the hot-cold pattern of the first course the teapot is heated before the water is
it is interesting to see that the family crams the course, when the cold drink is in the glass and poured in, actually on the boil, the plates for the
whole of the Sunday meal system into the last the hot solid upon the plate. first course are kept stacked on the rack above
part of its working day, after return from work. the cooker so that they are carried to the table
In some parts of England it is being reported warm. Apart from bottled sauces no addition of
that the working class family which enjoys a hot cold foods to a hot plate is permitted, nor
potato meal at the canteen is less and less vice versa. The bottled sauces are a subject in
inclined to cook one again for itself in the themselves, for they cross the sweet/savoury
evening. This just happened not to be the case in boundary as well as the hot/cold one.
our four families. The weekday meals repeat the Looking again at table 3 we can see that the
Sunday sequence in a modified time-table. A three courses of the main meal, in their due
close correspondence between the structure of sequence and rules of combination, present the
the Sunday dinner and that of the weekday main same structure, as do the three meals of Sunday.
meal 'A' is very evident. Take the main course, This becomes clearer when we consider the
which is generally called the dinner. It always rules governing meal B.
consists of a serving of potato, a 'centrepiece'
which on Sundays is always meat, 'trimmings'
(which word designates one or two green
vegetables) and a sousing in rich, brown, The rules for structuring course one are
thickened gravy (here called 'liquid dressing'). absolutely strict. There is no possibility of
The difference between this course in a special recognizing the event as a meal in the system
meal (say Sunday or Christmas Day) compared unless its first course is constituted on these
with a common meal (say a weekday evening) is rules. Some elements can be duplicated, but
that the number of trimmings are increased. So none omitted. It is impossible to start with
the rules of combination are the same : one something sweet, say grapefruit. There is more
staple, one centrepiece, one liquid dressing, one scope for fantasy in the composition of course
trimming in all cases; the special meal may have two. It is possible to serve a sweet cake with
more than one dressing and more than one custard, doing homely weekday service for the
trimming. Architecturally speaking it is as if the trifle, or to serve a tin of fruit in its syrup, with
difference between the doorway of a humble cream, in the one case leaving out the fruit, in
home and that of a grand mansion when it the other leaving out the cereal. This scope for The rules which govern the main meal acquire
consists always of two uprights and a cross-beam fantasy in the pudding course allows a formal more significance when we find them governing
is entirely in the decoration on the main pattern to be imposed upon the elements before the second meal and even more when certain of
structure. The first course is the main course they are served on to individual plates, an option them carry through systematically over the two
and it is always hot and savoury. The rules of which is not necessarily taken up on weekdays. meals. The regularity of the pattern is so strong
sequence require this. When the second course Another difference is that the second course is that it can be made to bear some weight of
is examined we find a repetition of the rules of served from the table whereas the first course is explanation. For example, before seeing the

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