Housing

Food had been revolutionized, with foodstuffs made in factories rather than grown or killed. Now further changes to dining at home were beginning to take shape.

The first was mealtime. In agricultural Britain, ‘dinner’ had been eaten at midday, ‘supper’ in the early evening, and ‘tea’ before bedtime. Now that there were more office workers than field labourers, ‘dinner’ was at five or six, when the white-collar workers returned (Labourers continued to take their ‘dinner’ with them, and factory operatives also ate theirs at midday).

Improved gas lighting also meant that eating after dark was no longer so expensive: by the 1870s, even the lower middle-classes were eating dinner at five and tea moved earlier, to fill the gap.

The appearance of the dinner table also changed. Previously, dinner was served ‘à la française’: the food was laid out on the table before the diners sat down, with soup at one end, fish at the other. This was ‘a remove’, which was then replaced by a joint of meat at one end and fish at the other, and a large spread of dishes in between.

Not everyone ate every dish: the aim was to have a little something for everyone. Mrs Beeton in 1861 thought this was the only sensible way to serve a meal, but by the 1870s it was being swept away by service ‘à la russe’, where each main dish was brought in separately, as a ‘course’. Choice was reduced, but so were quantities and economy mattered more.

Judith Flanders