The Savoury

When our Edwardian and Victorian forebears entertained, they did so on a lavish scale; a twelvecourse dinner was not unusual. It was during this period that the savoury enjoyed its heyday. And how necessary it was, performing the same function at the end of the meal that the hors d’oeuvre performed at the beginning. The latter stimulated the gastric juices to enable all that followed to be digested. At the end of a long, and copious, meal the system would have slowed down somewhat. This was the point at which a small, intensely savoury mouthful would drive the digestive juices into action once more.