Service à la Russe

Service à la Russe is what replaced service à la française, in Britain and elsewhere in Europe (France, Germany), in the course of the 19th century. This new style of table service provided for dishes being served in a sequence, sometimes very extended, of discrete courses to guests at their seats by servants who handed them round. It therefore required more servants, more cutlery, more china, more everything. There was also the need for table decorations to take up the space in the centre of the table which the dishes themselves would have occupied under the old system.