I have a theory about this based on an old meal etiquette book I have from around 1910. I need to find that book to get this right -- I meant to write up a journal entry about it.
In this book, they listed out all the courses of a formal dinner. There were something like seven of them. One of the courses was the entree, which came just before one of the meat courses but was not what we would call the appetizer -- both the entree and the next course were things that we would consider main courses now. So as some of the courses got eliminated and the menu pared down, the entree was one of the courses that remained.
If I find the book and list out the courses you'll see what I mean. But my theory is that it was the course following the entree that got eliminated, leaving the name entree.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-04-03 02:55 pm (UTC)I have a theory about this based on an old meal etiquette book I have from around 1910. I need to find that book to get this right -- I meant to write up a journal entry about it.
In this book, they listed out all the courses of a formal dinner. There were something like seven of them. One of the courses was the entree, which came just before one of the meat courses but was not what we would call the appetizer -- both the entree and the next course were things that we would consider main courses now. So as some of the courses got eliminated and the menu pared down, the entree was one of the courses that remained.
If I find the book and list out the courses you'll see what I mean. But my theory is that it was the course following the entree that got eliminated, leaving the name entree.