When I first arrived in Scotland, I was invited to a munchie box of dinner parties. These combined elegance with heavy drinking and generally followed a common plan: drinks and nibbles in a sitting-room, then soup or fancy salad in the dining-room, next main course(s), then pudding (dessert), then coffee, often with chocolates, and finally cheese and port.
Coffee was never the signal to go home, although the arrival of the port gave the hostess an excuse (should she wish one) to cart her female guests to the sitting room away from male-dominated chatter. For the record, the only hostess I knew still doing that in 2017 was me, Mrs McLean, and very shocked feminist guests were, too, even though I was thereby creating single-sex spaces.
Mr McLean resided in the attic of a large 17th/18th century villa in 86 acres of parkland with an uninterrupted view of the Firth of Forth. (Reader, I married him.) After the wedding, we lived there for nine years. Highlights of our sojourn included large dinner parties both indoors and out, for we had a lot of space. It was not unusual to serve mid-afternoon “Sunday lunch” to 15 people, carting large bowls of avocado salad and roasting pans of meat and potatoes down to the trestle tables set up before our Palladian pad. Almost everyone brought wine, which is good guest behaviour here, and our parties ended long after dark on Monday mornings.
After the deluge, we bought a small flat and hung paintings and drawings of our old home in our sitting room. Sadly, we no longer have space for 15 guests although it suddenly occurs to me that I could buy trestle tables and a dozen folding chairs and pray against rain. Meanwhile, when health and opportunity allow, we have dinner parties for five to six.
These follow the old customs: gin-and-tonics in the sitting-room with crisps (potato chips), and then a cry for all to go to the dining-room. There are then directions as to who should sit where, normally with the guest of honour at either my right or Mr McLean’s left. There is bread, butter, white wine, soup or fancy salad. There is usually just a single main dish, but with lots of potatoes, veg and red wine. Then there is a pudding or two, with sweet wine, if we have any, and I take orders for coffee. Then there is cheese and port (if we have port) and maybe nuts, for the fun of the fulfilling the idiom “from soup to nuts.”
Because the dining-room is rather small, serving is a bit haphazard. I generally ladle out soup in the kitchen and carry the bowls through. Mr McLean finds it difficult to carve from a wheelchair, so now I hack away at the poor dead animal on offer. Usually I serve out the puddings at the table or preassemble them in the kitchen. The other dishes are passed around.
We don’t have a dishwasher, so unless I am absorbed in the conversation I wash dishes and utensils between courses. My goal always is never to go to bed with more than a platoon of rinsed glasses still to be washed.
Why have dinner parties? As the Ancient Stoics well knew, one of the great joys in life is to sit around talking and eating with one’s friends–especially in a garden, if you have access to one and won’t be chewed by bugs. Dinner parties are also a great way to introduce new friends to old friends, or launch newcomers into the life of the community, or simply to renew and strengthen old ties.
Because relaxed conversation is such an important part of a party, the host or hostess should consider dividing ideologically opposed groups of friends between events. In my Palladian days, I kept two mental guest lists with the headings “Catholics” and “Communists.” (The Communists were usually just friendly unchurched modernists, not members of the Party per se.)
This is not to say that food is trivial. Dinner parties are the consolation of the childless, and these include most university students and other kinds of bachelors who are very happy to get a home-cooked meal prepared by someone other than themselves.
It is kind to check with guests if they have any food allergies or philosophies that might guide the menu, of course. There are also the season and your budget to consider. (Fun fact: Sunday Lunch for 15–including gin–in the Twenty-Teens cost about £90 – £100.) Finally, the host or hostess must be honest with him- or herself about how much time and skill he or she has to lavish on the cooking, for there is also the preprandial house-cleaning to consider. Moreover, the ideal host or hostess is the one who is relaxed and sits down for a drink with everyone else.
Normally it is a crime against hospitality to turn up too early or too late to a dinner party, although too early is worse. However, the good host or hostess’s first duty is to make all guests feel comfortable, and so he or she must put work and plans for a shower on hold to carry out this Prime Directive. To avoid your own embarrassment, don’t cook wearing just a gym bra and leggings under your apron, for you never know who might come early. Perhaps your insanely anti-trousers-on-women Polish Pretend Son will turn up with a bag of raw shellfish demanding counter space and make remarks about your attire.
The menu for that particular dinner party was heavy for May: PPS made his signature spicy prawns for the starter, I roasted a pork roast and potatoes, and I made a raspberry Bakewell. I also baked French baguettes that morning, although PPS complained that they were not crunchy enough and wanted to toast them. All the guests were male with liturgical interests, so I had ample time to wash dishes. For savoury we had cheese and crackers.
The menu for the next dinner party was suited to June. We had guacamole salad, rye bread, roast chicken with roast potatoes, curried carrots with ginger and some green veg. (I can rarely remember what green veg.) For pudding we had strawberry shortcakes, which in Britain means round shortbread cookies topped with hulled and macerated strawberries and sweetened whipped cream. For savoury we had cheese. There was a female guest this time, and she helped me wash up.
Incidentally, in Edinburgh circles (and very likely throughout Britain) guests are very rarely allowed to help a host or hostess wash up, partly because the host/ess doesn’t want them to see the kitchen, and partly because the host/ess has his or her way of doing things. It is good form here to ask to help, but not good form to insist on helping. However, in this as in all things, the Prime Directive comes into play, and many a Catholic party in Canada and the USA does end with everyone in the kitchen, washing and wiping.
This Sunday’s dinner menu included a mix of Polish and British dishes, for we had Polish guests and Poles are gracious when foreigners attempt to make their dishes. Thus, we had traditional Sunday chicken soup (rosoł) with egg noodles and soft rye bread, sausages baked with onions and sweet peppers, and mizeria (cucumber salad) and hot boiled Jersey Royal potatoes. Then we had British strawberry shortcakes before tucking into the Polish kremówka (pastry cream sandwiched between puff pastry) brought by guests. For savoury we had cheese and crackers again. This time, two guests helped with the washing up.
Perhaps it is obvious that for me part of the enjoyment of a dinner party is thinking and writing about it afterwards and then, in a few years, reading about it. After all, what would Brideshead Revisited be without Charles and Sebastian knocking back sauterne with strawberries, or Charles telling Rex Mottram how to eat caviar? Just a tale of painting, love affairs, snobbery and doom.
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