The Cocktail Party

Perhaps a cookery book should start in a less frivolous fashion than with a chapter headed 'The Cocktail Party,' and should show in its initial stages a proper seriousness of purpose and general sober-mindedness. But I had an idea that perhaps a light-hearted approach might present a more immediate appeal. One never knows, indeed, what trifle may awaken the enthusiasm necessary to carry one beyond the early arduous tasks connected with cooking into those realms in which cookery is an art and a pleasure. Rosemary Hume and I have noticed that a lesson or a demonstration on cocktail savouries is always popular, conjuring up as it does a vista of successful parties to be held in the future, and imparting a touch of glamour to the basic realities of the kitchen. Well, if the desire to excel in making good bouchées encourages a student to achieve mastery with pastry, all is well. Maybe this chapter should be regarded as the jam with the powder, the carrot before the donkey, but no matter if it serves to lure anyone on in the kitchen. It is only fair to admit that neither R. H. nor I set great store by cocktails or their accompanying savouries, regarding them, as it were, as menaces to the appreciation of good food.

Some cocktails, particularly the more potent of them, may blunt the palate, and preliminary savouries the appetite. The basic idea that a cocktail is intended to stimulate the appetite loses its point when one considers the profusion of food and drink usually presented at a cocktail party. At this point I am reminded of a paragraph that struck me in one of three articles written by Rebecca West for the New Yorker early in 1953. The articles were called 'The Annals of Treason' and dealt with the case of William Martin Marshall, the radio telegraphist, who became involved with a Soviet agent in London and was tried for espionage. His parents felt that the whole trouble had started in Russia, where they thought he had followed a life to which he was not accustomed, and Rebecca West goes on:

There were continual parties. Cocktail parties. The sharp sound of the words, flung out after a preparatory pause, recalled that there was an age not so long ago when a cocktail was considered an immoral drink, as different from sherry as concubinage is from marriage, and a cocktail party meant an assembly of people who had abandoned normal restraints. A change in custom in one group may take a very long time to become known in other groups. There was, indeed, no reason for a household like this, which drank either beer or, more probably, only soft drinks, ever to have learned that cocktails had long since become respectable, and that cocktail parties had for many people moved up to the position, formerly occupied by tea parties, of social functions too stereotyped to be anything but tedious.

Whether one likes such parties or not, it appears that for the moment at any rate they have come to stay and have their uses, and that being so, if you give one at all let it be of the best, a best which is not necessarily achieved by serving too many or too strong drinks.

When in England we first adopted the cocktail party we were inclined to timidity, and the range of savouries offered was conservative as to size and variety. Even yet there is a tendency in this direction. Too many little mouthfuls, canapés, bouchées and suchlike, can be monotonous. I personally like better to have one or two main dishes of undeniable popularity, every bit of which will be eaten, and which will send no one home feeling blown up with starch. For instance, if I were feeling extravagant I should choose perhaps as my pièce de résistance the prawn dish with Alabama sauce, or if economically bent the cream cheese dish; and I should moderate the number of small savouries accordingly. One must of course differentiate between the various occasions for which cocktail savouries are required, and they may fall under the following headings:

(a) Small savouries served with drinks before a dinner party. These should not be too substantial and need not be greatly varied, and such things as nuts, olives, small cheese biscuits, and tiny canapés are adequate. The canapés should be of a size that can comfortably be eaten in one mouthful.

(b) Savouries for the cocktail party lasting perhaps from six to eight o'clock, at which may be offered a certain number of fairly substantial items.

(c) Savouries for the pre-theatre cocktail party, when you know your guests will not be eating seriously until much later, and a few fairly solid savouries will be welcome.

It may well be emphasized at the outset that the success of this type of food depends more on seasoning, flavouring, and pleasing contrast of texture than on elaborate and expensive materials, and that particular consideration should be given to presentation, and ease of serving and eating. Remembering the worst and the best of such parties clarifies my ideas, and I will tell of those features which made or marred them for me. On a less successful occasion I remember thinking it a great mistake to have so large a number of savouries of one type. The labour-saving device resorted to for this party of making one large batch of pastry and ringing the changes on the filling might possibly have been all right if some more refreshing and contrasting items had been offered, but the addition of filled bridge rolls and bread sandwiches to an array of pastry cases did not produce happy results. The sum total was stuffy and starchy. Too many similar textures are also tiresome; creamy fillings in bouchées and creamy spreads for canapés become extremely cloying. So bearing in mind the need for refreshment for the palate, it is well to vary the pastry, bread, or biscuit theme of these savouries, perhaps with celery as in the recipe on page 6, or by offering stuffed grapes or...