A course is a group of
dishes served together during a
meal
A meal is an occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes consumption of food. The English names used for specific meals vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal. A meal is different from a ...
.
A course may include many different dishes served at the same time, as in ''
Service à la française'' (). The first "course", for example, could include
potages,
''hors d’œuvres'', and
entrées all set out together. Meals served ''à la française'' can include from one to five courses, depending on the way the stages of the meal are grouped together. Beginning in the early 19th century, meals of three courses were the most common arrangement in ''service à la française''.
In contrast, a course may include individual dishes brought to the table sequentially and served separately to each guest, as in ''
Service à la russe'' (). For example, a meal could have a first course of potage, a second course of hors d’œuvres, a third course of entrées, and so on. The number of courses in meals served ''à la russe'' has changed over time, but an underlying sequence of dishes—based on the stages of the meal in the older ''service à la française''—persisted from the 19th century to
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
and continued for formal meals in a much-reduced form into the 21st century.
Etymology
The word "course" is derived from the French word ''cours'' (run), which came into English in the 14th century. It may have come into use because the food for a banquet had to be brought at speed from a remote kitchen. In the 1420 cookbook ''
Du fait de cuisine'', the word "course" is used interchangeably with the word for serving.
References and sources
References
Sources
See also
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Cookbook
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food.
Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (food), course (appetize ...
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Culinary arts
Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking, and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called chefs or ...
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Full course dinner
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hRecipe – a
microformat
Microformats (μF) are predefined HTML markup (like HTML classes) created to serve as descriptive and consistent metadata about elements, designating them as representing a certain type of data (such as contact information, geographic coor ...
for marking-up recipes in web pages
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Italian meal structure
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List of desserts
A dessert is typically the sweet Course (food), course that, after the entrée and main course, concludes a meal in the culture of many countries, particularly western world, Western culture. The course usually consists of sweet foods, but may ...
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Lists of foods
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Main course
A main course is the featured or primary dish in a meal consisting of several courses. It usually follows the entrée () course.
Usage
In the United States and Canada (except Quebec), the main course is traditionally called an "entrée". En ...
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Recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish (food), dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main r ...
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Sadhya
Food and drink terminology
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