page_title: Hors d'oeuvre
section_title: French service
hierarchical_section_title: Hors d'oeuvre / Origins / French service
context_page_description: An hors d'oeuvre, appetiser or starter is a small dish served before a meal in European cuisine. Some hors d'oeuvres are served cold, others hot. Hors d'oeuvres may be served at the dinner table as a part of the meal, or they may be served before seating, such as at a reception or cocktail party. Formerly, hors d'oeuvres were also served between courses.
  Typically smaller than a main dish, an hors d'oeuvre is often designed to be eaten by hand.
context_section_description: During the Middle Ages formal French meals were served with entremets between the serving of plates. These secondary dishes could be either actual food dishes, or elaborate displays and even dramatic or musical presentations. In the 14th century, recipes for entremets were mostly made with meat, fish, pork and vegetables. By the 15th century the elaborate display and performances were served up between courses, and could be edible or displays of subjects relevant to the host, created in butter sculpture or other types of crafted work. With the introduction in the 17th century of service à la française, where all the dishes are laid out at once in very rigid symmetrical fashion, entremets began to change in meaning but were still mainly savoury. Along with this came elaborate silver and ceramic table displays as well as pièces montées. The entremets were placed between the other dishes within the main work of the meal.
  At about this time in the 17th century, smaller dishes began to be served by being placed outside the main work of symmetrically placed dishes. These were known as hors d'oeuvre. Hors d'oeuvres were originally served as a canapé of small toasted bread with a savoury topping before a meal. The first mention of the food item was by François Massialot in 1691, mentioned in his book: Le cuisinier roial et bourgeois (The Royal and Bourgeois Cook) and explained as "Certain dishes served in addition to those one might expect in the normal composition of the feast". In the French publication Les plaisirs de la table, Edouard Nignon stated that hors d'oeuvres originated in Asia. He went on to state that the French considered hors-d'oeuvres to be superfluous to a well cooked meal. Service à la française continued in Europe until the early 19th century. After the 19th century the entremet would become almost exclusively a sweet dish or dessert with the British custom of the "savoury" being the only remaining tradition of the savoury entremet.
  The style of formal dining changed drastically in the 19th century, becoming successive courses served one after the other over a period of time. Some traditional hors d'oeuvres would remain on the table throughout the meal. These included olives, nuts, celery and radishes. The changing, contemporary hors d'oeuvres, sometimes called "dainty dishes", became more complicated in preparation. Pastries, with meat and cream sauces among other elaborate items, had become a course served after the soup.
caption: Hors-d'oeuvres (1623) by Pieter Claesz
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