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A Girl's Birthday Luncheon
ONC NCE a mother gave a little birthday luncheon for her daughter who was a freshman in high school. It pleased the fourteen-year-old and her friends because of the novelty in decorations and menu.
The class colors were green and white, so that scheme was used throughout. In the center of the table was a green bowl with a few paper narcissi arranged in a flower holder, Japanese fashion.
Around each plate was a wreath of smilax any small green vine would do perfectly well and above each plate a tiny green candle burning in a wee holder. The placecards were tied to the handles of the holders. Glass dishes of lime drops and wintergreen candies added to the general green and white effect.
The menu consisted of fruit cocktail with a sprig of mint atop of each portion, followed [90] by a second course of chicken à la King generously sprinkled with capers, and accompanied by hot rolls and olives. Then came hot chocolate with a marshmallow floating in each cup and milestone salad, which consisted of oblongs of cream cheese into which numerals cut out of green peppers were pressed. The milestones stood erect on fresh lettuce leaves and were served with French dressing.
After that a birthday cake was borne in ablaze with fourteen green tapers and set before the little hostess to cut. Great was the fun when the fortune favors, baked in the cake, were found by the guests.
Pistachio ice-cream accompanied the cake, but vanilla ice-cream or a green gelatine dessert would be equally fitting. The favors were little green vanity bags made from ribbon by the fourteen-year-old's mother. [91]
The organising idea is a colour, not a flavour. The class colours were green and white, and the menu was chosen to obey them.
- Chicken à la KingDiced cooked chicken in a cream sauce with mushroom and sweet pepper, usually finished with egg yolk and sherry and served over toast or in a pastry case. The capers are this particular hostess’s own addition, and they are a good one: the sauce is rich and flat without an acid in it.
- Milestone saladOblongs of cream cheese with numerals cut from green pepper pressed into the face, standing upright on lettuce. The whole thing turns on the cheese being firm enough to stand, so chill it hard, cut it with a wetted knife, and press the numerals in at the last minute or they will weep.
- Hot chocolate arrives in the middleIt is served alongside the salad course, before the cake, not after it. The order of this luncheon is not an order a modern host would use, and if you follow the page you should follow it deliberately rather than by accident.
- Pistachio for the colourThe book says plainly that vanilla ice-cream or a green gelatine would do as well. The dessert was chosen to be green. That is the method of the entire book stated out loud in one sentence.
- SmilaxA trailing greenhouse vine used for trimming tables, and the book itself concedes that any small green vine would do. Florists rarely stock it now; ivy or asparagus fern is what you will be offered and it is the same effect.
A mother laying on a luncheon for a fourteen-year-old and her high-school friends, with place cards, individual candles, a centrepiece and a favour at every setting, is teaching by rehearsal. The daughter is called the little hostess and is given the cake to cut in front of her guests; the mother made the ribbon vanity bags by hand and stays out of the account. The apparatus of adult entertaining is being handed over in miniature, which is why the class colours matter so much on the table — they are the one part of the occasion the girls chose themselves.