Dear America
by uber
This should probably be a pownce entry but,
Why do you call main courses “Entrées”? It confuses the hell out of me.
This should probably be a pownce entry but,
Why do you call main courses “Entrées”? It confuses the hell out of me.
Comments
I suspect it’s a hangover from way back when the main course was formally paraded around the room before being served – this was known as the “Entrée”.
There’s an alternate explanation, based on the premise that the removal of the roast, or “Roti” (the traditional main) from the menu, and the general lessening of portion sizes in haute cuisine, led to a shift in terminologies for the main course. Entrées were eaten before the roti, and would cover a wider variety of meats, much like today’s main courses.
America appears to have dropped the roti and gone “Starter, entrée, dessert”, while the rest of the world dropped entrée and went “Starter, main (roti), dessert”.
This guy explains it better than I can:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/FOOD/entree.html
Wikipedia also has a bit on it.
What he said, and they’re thickies.