Two readers have subtly insisted on a bit more research about why risotto isn’t allowed on a formal dinner menu. Etiquetteer responds, and comments on the idea of Company Food.
Dear Etiquetteer:
Thank you for giving my loved ones and me that most precious gift in these pandemic times: something new to talk about. We are all curious as to why risotto would “never be found on a Perfectly Proper formal menu.” Now we all agree that most, but not all, food that is eaten with the hands is not formal, e.g. asparagus - formal, hot dogs - not formal. But even my dear mother, who, like Walter Matthau’s character in “A New Leaf”, has been “keeping alive traditions that were dead long before [she] was born”, even she could think of no reason to exclude risotto from the formal table. My mother, husband and I would all like to hear why risotto is banished to the casual crowd and what other foods we may have been allowing to improperly mingle with The Better Sort.
Dear Etiquetteer:
I do hope that you are one of those who, like the great Julia, believe that Italian is not a cuisine but merely cooking*, and that the formal menu is restricted to the French. A properly cooked risotto has pride of place on the menu of the finest establishments from Catania to Lombardy . . . Alas, most Americans are familiar with Italo-American restaurant cuisine, developed in Italian neighborhoods for consumption by the Anglo-Irish. It is but a shadow of true Italian cuisine. (Now, of course, I sound like a number of my Italian colleagues who are unbearably chauvinist when it comes to their cuisine.) While it may have been true in the last century that "Italian" was sufficiently debased not to be found on the formal menu, I do believe that times have changed.
***
For this quest, Etiquetteer went immediately to drink the Pure Milk of the Word of Emily Post Herself. Her two criteria are Formality and Odor. In a little section of Etiquette entitled “But Don’t Call It Formal!” she defines “formal” as “. . . a dinner of ceremony, for which the menu must be limited to definitely prescribed dishes.” Millicent Fenwick, in her Vogue’s Book of Etiquette**, specifies “The choice of food for a most elaborate formal dinner is still governed by the traditional rules of the great school of French cooking. The old rules have been given a slightly different interpretation . . . but there is still a very definite and somewhat inflexible form . . . ” So there we have it: French cooking.
The next thing Mrs. Post worries about is cooking odors. Fear of Cooking Smells used to be a thing, as the children say***, but isn’t something we worry about now. Mrs. Post calls out “the penetrating odor of frying or any cooking of the cabbage or onion families.” Earlier she notes “Some people love highly flavored Spanish or Indian dishes, but they are not appropriate for a formal dinner. At an informal dinner an Indian curry or Spanish enchilada for one dish is delicious for those who like it . . . It is the same way with Italian dishes.“ Mrs. Fenwick also states very clearly that onions are never part of a formal menu. “A rule of formal dinners is that onions cannot be served, even in a garniture. There are some elaborately concealed exceptions to this, but it is a rule.”
So risotto has two strikes against it, first for not being French, and second for containing onions. Garlic, another frequent ingredient in risotto, is also a Banned Substance on the formal dinner table, mostly because it contributes to bad breath (or its perception).
What other foods are not Company Food? The first reader above correctly called out hot dogs. Eleanor Roosevelt took some heat from her formidable mother-in-law for serving hot dogs to George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their state visit in 1939, even if it was for luncheon. But Mrs. Roosevelt rarely approved of anything Eleanor did anyway. Mrs. Post firmly states that corn on the cob is “never served at a formal dinner party.” And Etiquetteer would add any food you have to fight to get into your mouth, like a traditional New England lobster. This is why Lobster Newburg is so Perfectly Proper, and happily tomorrow, March 25, is National Lobster Newburg Day. Etiquetteer cannot remember where or who stated that pie is not a Company Dessert, so stay tuned for further announcements.
Once upon a time two soups would be offered at dinner, one clear and one thick. Over time, the thick soup fell away from the formal dinner menu, so only hot clear soup would be served in a soup plate. Etiquetteer has been using the Dress Dinner Challenge to explore aspects of the formal dinner menu that don’t seem too intimidating to cook, and is going to try a traditional consommé Madrilène this weekend. In the language of the formal dinner, Madrilène always means tomatoes, so this is a clear tomato soup that has to be strained through cheesecloth to get the proper clarity. Look for a report on Sunday.
*Reading this, Etiquetteer could not help but remember the Outraged Soprano in The Great Caruso starring Mario Lanza, who so memorably said “Tenor isn’t a voice! It’s a disease!”
**Her account of a traditional Dinner of Ceremony is actually more thorough than Mrs. Post’s.
***Ron Haver recalled in his A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration visiting George Cukor at his home and smelling the most divine dinner in preparation for a party that evening. He then witnessed Mr. Cukor admonishing the cook for leaving the kitchen door open and filling the house with cooking odors.