Salad is always the accompaniment of “tame game,” aspics, cold meat dishes of all sorts, and is itself “accompanied by” crackers and cheese or cheese souffle or cheese straws.

=SPECIAL MENUS OF UNACCOMPANIED DISHES=

One person can wait on eight people if dishes are chosen which need no supplements.  The fewer the dishes to be passed, the fewer the hands needed to pass them.  And yet many housekeepers thoughtlessly order dishes within the list above, and then wonder why the dinner is so hopelessly slow, when their waitress is usually so good!

The following suggestions are merely offered in illustration; each housekeeper can easily devise further for herself.  It is not necessary to pass anything whatever with melon or grapefruit, or a macedoine of fruit, or a canape.  Oysters, on the other hand, have to be followed by tabasco and buttered brown bread.  Soup needs nothing with it (if you do not choose split pea which needs croutons, or petite marmite which needs grated cheese).  Fish dishes which are “made” with sauce in the dish, such as sole au vin blanc, lobster Newburg, crab ravigote, fish mousse, especially if in a ring filled with plenty of sauce, do not need anything more.  Tartar sauce for fried fish can be put in baskets made of hollowed-out lemon rind—­a basket for each person—­and used as a garnishing around the dish.

Filet mignon, or fillet of beef, both of them surrounded by little clumps of vegetables share with chicken casserole in being the life-savers of the hostess who has one waitress in her dining-room.  Another dish, but more appropriate to lunch than to dinner, is of French chops banked against mashed potatoes, or puree of chestnuts, and surrounded by string beans or peas.  None of these dishes requires any following dish whatever, not even a vegetable.

Fried chicken with corn fritters on the platter is almost as good as the two beef dishes, since the one green vegetable which should go with it, can be served leisurely, because fried chicken is not quickly eaten.  And a ring of aspic with salad in the center does not require accompanying crackers as immediately as plain lettuce.

Steak and broiled chicken are fairly practical since neither needs gravy, condiment, or sauce—­especially if you have a divided vegetable dish so that two vegetables can be passed at the same time.

If a hostess chooses not necessarily the above dishes but others which approximately take their places, she need have no fear of a slow dinner, if her one butler or waitress is at all competent.

=THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE PLAIN COOK=

In giving informal or little dinners, you need never worry because you cannot set the dishes of a “professional” dinner-party cook before your friends or even strangers; so long as the food that you are offering is good of its kind.

It is by no means necessary that your cook should be able to make the “clear” soup that is one of the tests of the perfect cook (and practically never produced by any other); nor is it necessary that she be able to construct comestible mosaics and sculptures.  The essential thing is to prevent her from attempting anything she can’t do well.  If she can make certain dishes that are pretty as well as good to taste, so much the better.  But remember, the more pretentious a dish is, the more it challenges criticism.