THE TWO-COURSE DINNER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19846, 21 May 1927, Page 19 (Supplement)

THE TWO-COURSE DINNER

The regime of the two-course dinner in Paris prohibits two moat dishes, and Ish or meat, but not both, is allowed. Outwardly there is littl • sign of restriction and hors d‘ oeuvre and such courses as sweetbreads and other delicacies which ore not strictly legs of mutton or joints of beef, easily make up for any deficiencies. How difficult it is to enforce such restrictions, and how easy it is to get round them—after which they can die a natural death — ce.u be seen by comparison with similar efforts in sixteenth-century France. After ten bad harvests, an edict, of 1563 provided that no meal should con sist of more than three courses, ami (hat those who transgressed this ordinance should be heavily lined the first fime and still more the second. 'The fine also included the guests, while the cook was to be sent to prison for a fortnight and fed on bread and water. For the second offence he was to be beaten and banished. The law survived ■xactly one month and was then dropped. Similar edicts were published in the seventeenth century. One of them, which prescribed the statement of prices, was less successful than the preen t law on Ihe subject. This has succeeded to such an extent as to cause innkeepers to grumble. In the smaller restaurants to-day it is easy to see what a meal is going to cost, though, even here, supplements are smuggled in in such fashion that they are only discovered afterwards. In the big restaurants, the menu is far less discoverable, and the extras —the price of which is not plainly stated often lead to trouble. The disciplinary measures which gave trouble three or four hundred years ago are almost exactly the same as those which are giving trouble to-day.