Dinner
Encyclopedia : D : DI : DIN : Dinner
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| These articles are all part of the Meals series |
| Common meals... |
| Breakfast |
| Second breakfast |
| Elevenses |
| Brunch |
| Tiffin |
| Lunch |
| Tea |
| Dinner |
| Supper |
| Dessert |
| Snack |
| See also... |
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Cuisine | Kitchens
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Dinner is a food-related term with several meanings.
According to definition, the term dinner is simply the largest meal of the day. As such, it could mean breakfast, lunch or supper, according the prevailing traditions in any given family or region. It could even be a snack, if that happened to be one's largest meal that day. As such, the term dinner could even be used for different meals in the same family, from day to day. Because of this, the term dinner is often ambiguous, as compared to other terms that already exist for the three main meals of the day: breakfast, lunch and supper. (Many who use the term dinner regularly would feel there are distinctions between that term and synonyms, but the general idea will be conveyed by the unambiguous terms.)
In Australia and most parts of the United States and Canada, dinner is the evening meal served around 6 or 7 p.m. In some regions, such as the Maritimes and Québec, the evening meal is called supper (souper in Québec), and dinner (dîner) refers to the noon meal, which itself would be called lunch in most parts of the United States and Canada.
In the United Kingdom, dinner traditionally meant the main meal of the day. Because of differences in custom as to when this meal was taken, dinner might mean the evening meal (typically in the higher social classes) or the midday meal (typically in lower social classes, who may describe their evening meal as tea). There is sometimes snobbery and reverse snobbery about which meaning is used. Large formal evening meals are invariably described as dinners (hence, also, the term dinner jacket which is a form of evening dress). School dinners is a British phrase for school lunches.
Ambiguity is often avoided altogether by using lunch for the midday meal and tea or supper for the evening meal, though these terms can also carry their own ambiguities.
A more formal definition of "dinner", especially outside North America, is any meal consisting of multiple courses. The minimum is usually two but there can be as many as seven. Possible courses are:
- Hors d'oeuvres (also known as appetisers, starters)
- Soup course (occasionally sorbet)
- Entree course (after which it is customary to serve sorbet)
- Fish course
- Meat course
- Dessert (also known as the Sweet or pudding course)
- Cheese course
Some confusion is caused by the word entrée, which is used in North America for the main course, but which was originally one of the earlier courses (most likely the fish course, when the main dish was red meat). In French, les entrées are the appetisers, and entrée is a somewhat pretentious word in Great Britain for the same thing ("starters" is more commonly seen).
Dinner is generally followed by tea or coffee, sometimes served with mint chocolates or other sweets, or with brandy or a digestif. When dinner consists of many courses, these tend to be smaller and to be served over a longer time period than a dinner with only two or three courses. Dinners with many courses tend to occur at formal events such as dinner parties or banquets.
This formal version of the meal is generally served in the evening, starting some time between 7.30 and 8.30 (in the Netherlands typically at 6.00). It may be served at midday or shortly afterwards. However this tends to be more common practice in Scotland than in other countries. In Spain, dinner is typically served late in the evening around 9 or 10 p.m., but this is because they have late lunches.
History
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the word "dinner" referred to breakfast in Middle English. It derives from late Latin disjunare (to break fast) which has also provided both the French déjeuner (breakfast or lunch, depending on region) and dîner (supper or lunch, depending on region).In well-off families in England during the mid-17th century, dinner was served at any time between 11 a.m. and noon and was a rich, heavy, alcoholic meal that lasted for anything up to 3 or 4 hours. After the meal proper, the men would stay at the table to smoke, chat, and drink, while the women would retire to a boudoir to talk, sew, and brew tea.
Then during the 18th century, dinner was served at a gradually later and later time until by the early 1800s, the normal time was between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. and an extra meal called luncheon had been created to fill the midday gap.
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