[Sca-cooks] Waiter service

[Johnna Holloway]

OED indicates mid-18th century

2. An extra dish served as a relish to whet the appetite between the 
courses of a meal or (more generally) at its commencement.

1742 POPE 
<http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/help/bib/oed2-p3.html#pope> 
Dunc. IV. 317 He..Try'd all hors-d'uvres, all liqueurs defin'd, 
Judicious drank, and greatly-daring din'd. 1771 SMOLLETT 
<http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/help/bib/oed2-s3.html#smollett> 
Humph. Cl. 8 Aug., I have seen turnips make their appearance, not as a 
dessert, but by way of hors d'uvres, or whets. 1898 Pall Mall Mag. Jan. 
85 The more unpalatable is an hors d'uvre [to him], the more fashionable 
is the dinner which it precedes.

Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food  says current to
the French as term since the 17th century and to the English since the 18th.
I like the wording of describing them as "whets".

Johnnae

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

>There are also a few references to hors-douevres and their service in  
>Barbara Ketcham Wheaton's "Savoring the Past". Maybe later I'll have  
>a chance to get more specific, but it suggests that hors-doeuvres are  
>a seventeenth-century banquet (the furniture, as well as the meal)  
>item, "spacially, but not temporally, outside of the meal."
>
>My suspicion is that the standing "cocktail party" hors-doeuvre  
>service immediately before a large banquet in an adjoining room, is  
>essentially a form of crowd control, traffic flow regulator, etc.
>
>Adamantius
>
>  
>