Entrée

An entrée (, US also ; ), in modern French table service and that of much of the English-speaking world, is a dish served before the main course of a meal. Outside North America and parts of English-speaking Canada, it is generally synonymous with the terms hors d'oeuvre, appetizer, or starter. It may be the first dish served, or it may follow a soup or other small dish or dishes.

In the United States and parts of English-speaking Canada, the term entrée instead refers to the main dish or the only dish of a meal.

Early use of the term
The word entrée as a culinary term first appears in print around 1536 in the Petit traicté auquel verrez la maniere de faire cuisine, more widely known from a later edition titled Livre fort excellent de cuisine, in a collection of menus at the end of the book. There, the first stage of each meal is called the entree de table (entrance to the table); the second stage consists of potaiges (foods boiled or simmered "in pots"); the third consists of one or more services de rost (meat or fowl "roasted" in dry heat); and the last is the issue de table (departure from the table). These four stages of the meal appear consistently in this order in all the books that derive from the Petit traicté.

The terms entree de table and issue de table are organizing words, "describing the structure of a meal rather than the food itself". The terms potaiges and rost indicate cooking methods but not ingredients. The menus, though, give some idea of both the ingredients and the cooking methods that were characteristic of each stage of the meal.

Sausages, offal, and raw watery fruits (oranges, plums, peaches, apricots, and grapes) were apparently considered uniquely appropriate for starting the meal, as those foods appear only in the entree de table. Other dishes considered appropriate for the entree stage also appear in later stages of the meal, such as venison cooked in various ways (in the entree, potaiges, and rost services) and savory pies and sauced meats (in the entree and rost services). The distribution of dishes is very similar to that of the menus in the Ménagier de Paris, written 150 years before the Petit traicté.

The entrée in the "Classical Order" of table service
The stages of the meal underwent several significant changes between the mid-16th and mid-17th century. Notably, the potage became the first stage of the service and the entrée became the second stage. By 1650, the term "entrée" had lost its literal meaning and had come to refer to the stage of the meal after the potage and before the roast, entremets, and dessert.

The term "entrée" also came to refer to the dishes served at the entrée stage. While cookbooks and dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries rarely discuss the type of dishes appropriate to each stage of the meal with any specificity, entrées and the dishes of the other stages of the meal can be distinguished from each other by certain characteristics, such as their ingredients, cooking methods, and serving temperatures. The distinct characteristics of the entrée were at first loosely observed, or perhaps more accurately, the "rules" were in a formative stage for several decades. By the early 18th century, though, certain ingredients and cooking methods were increasingly confined to the entrée stage of the meal.

In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, entrées on meat days included butchers' meats (but not ham), suckling pig, fowl, furred and feathered game, and offal. Eggs were never served as entrées on meat days; they were served only as entremets. Vegetables often made up part of the sauce or garnish, but entrées on meat days were always meat dishes; separate dishes of vegetables were served only as entremets.

On lean days, fish replaced meat and fowl in every stage of the meal other than dessert. Entrées included a wide range of fish, shellfish, crustaceans, turtles, and frogs. Entrées were rarely composed only of vegetables, except during Lent, when vegetable entrées ("entrées en racines", encompassing all vegetables, not just "roots") were sometimes served. Eggs were commonly served as entrées on lean days out of Lent; in Lent, eggs were never served at any meal.

Moist cooking methods were characteristic of the entrée stage of the meal, typical preparations being sautés, ragoûts, and fricassées. Meat or fowl (but not fish) might be roasted, but it was first wrapped in paper, or stuffed with a forcemeat, or barded with herbs or anchovies, or finished in a sauce, or prepared in some other way to keep the dish from browning and crisping like a true roast. Savory pies and pastries were baked in dry heat, but the enclosed meat cooked in its own steam and juices. Meat fritters and, on lean days, fish fritters were also served as entrées.

All entrées were served hot, which was a salient feature of entrées until the 19th century.

Large entrées
Large joints of meat (usually beef or veal) and large whole fowl (turkey and geese) were the grandes or grosses entrées of the meal. When roasted, whole joints and fowl were called "spit-roasted entrées" (entrées de broche), always served with a sauce to distinguish them from true roasts.

Le Bouilli
When boiled, a joint of beef was "le bouilli", the first of the entrées consumed in the meal.

Relevés
In the late 18th century, the practice arose of removing the empty soup tureens and replacing them with entrées de broche or other grosses entrées. The replacement dishes were commonly called "relevés", or in English, "removes". They were the last of the entrées consumed at the meal, although they were brought to the table immediately after the potages.

Small entrées
The most numerous of the entrées at any meal were the "ordinary entrées" (entrées ordinaires), consumed after the bouilli and before other grosses entrées. In composition, they were distinguished from the grosses entrées by the small size of their ingredients, not the size of the dish itself. Small fowl could be served whole, but large fowl and large joints of meat were cut into pieces or fillets. Despite the designation "ordinary", these entrées were much more elaborate and refined than grosses entrées.

Hors d'œuvre
In the late 17th century, "hors d'œuvre" were served in both the entrée and entremets stages of the meal as little "extra" dishes. In the late 18th century, hors d'œuvre were confined to the entrée stage of the meal and were thought of as a sort of small entrée, always served hot and always consumed as the last of the entrées.

Changes in the 19th century
In the 19th century, hors d'œuvre became a distinct stage of the meal. They were no longer considered to be entrées, and, in a marked change from earlier practice, they were consumed immediately after the potage and before the other entrées. Over the course of the century, cold hors d'œuvre became increasingly common.

Relevés also became a distinct stage of the meal, often consumed before the other entrées rather than after them. Relevés came to include not just spit-roasted joints, but all large joints and bulky cuts of butcher’s meats and whole fish cooked in any way. Entrées, in the new sense of the term, included less bulky foods, like sliced meats and fillets of fish; fowl cooked in any way other than roasting; foie gras; and meat pies and other pastries of poultry and game.

Due at least in part to the collapse of the church’s authority in France, rules governing meat and lean days were followed irregularly. In particular, fish was commonly served on meat days, and whole fish became a classic relevé. Some styles of service even included a "fish course".

After the 1820s, the bouilli was no longer routinely served at fine dinners, having been replaced by a wider variety of relevés. Also, in a marked change from earlier practices, cold entrées became increasingly common.

Over the course of the 19th century, entrées and relevés were sometimes considered to be the principal part of the meal.

Changes in the 20th century
Distinctions between the various types of entrées (grosses, grandes, de broche, relevé) had largely fallen out of use by the end of the 19th century, and menus of the first half of the 20th century routinely include entrées but not relevés.

In France, the entrée slowly came to be associated primarily with its position in the meal rather than the composition of its dishes. Despite the objections of various food authorities who insisted on retaining the classical meaning of the word, the term entrée came to refer to the first course of the meal, a small dish that precedes the main course (plat principal) in a three-course meal. The "new" use of the term, now common almost worldwide, is a return to the literal meaning of the word and a partial return to the medieval arrangement of the meal.

In the United States and parts of English-speaking Canada, though, the older understanding of the entrée as a substantial meat course persisted, and the word came to refer to the principal dish of the meal. In the 21st century, though, the use of the word entrée in North American menus began to decline, being replaced by terms like "main course" or other terms appropriate to the culinary tradition of the given restaurant.