In
dining
A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearanc ...
, a course is a specific set of
food
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is inge ...
items that are served together during a
meal
A meal is an eating occasion that takes place at a certain time and includes consumption of food. The names used for specific meals in English vary, depending on the speaker's culture, the time of day, or the size of the meal.
Although they ca ...
, all at the same time. A course may include multiple
dishes or only one, and often includes items with some variety of
flavor
Flavor or flavour is either the sensory perception of taste or smell, or a flavoring in food that produces such perception.
Flavor or flavour may also refer to:
Science
*Flavors (programming language), an early object-oriented extension to Lis ...
s. For instance, a
hamburger
A hamburger, or simply burger, is a food consisting of fillings—usually a patty of ground meat, typically Ground beef, beef—placed inside a sliced bun or bread roll. Hamburgers are often served with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles ...
served with
French fries
French fries (North American English), chips (British English), finger chips ( Indian English), french-fried potatoes, or simply fries, are '' batonnet'' or ''allumette''-cut deep-fried potatoes of disputed origin from Belgium and France. Th ...
would be considered a single course, and most likely the entire meal. Likewise, an extended
banquet
A banquet (; ) is a formal large meal where a number of people consume food together. Banquets are traditionally held to enhance the prestige of a host, or reinforce social bonds among joint contributors. Modern examples of these purposes i ...
might include
many courses, such as a course where a
soup
Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot (but may be cool or cold), that is made by combining ingredients of meat or vegetables with stock, milk, or water. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ing ...
is served by itself, a course where
cordon bleu is served at the same time as its
garnish and perhaps a
side dish
A side dish, sometimes referred to as a side order, side item, or simply a side, is a food item that accompanies the entrée or main course at a meal.dessert
Dessert is a course (food), course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as confections, and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. In some parts of the world, such as much of Greece and West Africa, and ...
such as a
pumpkin pie
Pumpkin pie is a dessert pie with a spiced, pumpkin-based custard filling. The pumpkin and pumpkin pie are both a symbol of harvest time, and pumpkin pie is generally eaten during the fall and early winter. In the United States and Canada it is u ...
. Courses may vary in size as well as number depending on the culture where the meal takes place.
Meals are composed of one or more courses,
which in turn are composed of one or more dishes.
When dishes are served mostly in a single course, this is called
service à la française
(; "service in the French style") is the practice of serving various dishes of meal at the same time, with the diners helping themselves from the serving dishes. That contrasts to (; "service in the Russian style") in which dishes are brought ...
; when dishes are served mostly in separate courses, this is called
service à la russe
The historical form of (; "service in the Russian style") is a manner of dining that involves courses being brought to the table sequentially, and the food being portioned on the plate by the waiter (usually at a sideboard in the dining room) bef ...
.
Etymology
The word is derived from the French word ''cours'' (run), and came into English in the 14th century.
It came to be used perhaps because the food in a banquet serving had to be brought at speed from a remote kitchen – in the 1420 cookbook ''
Du fait de cuisine
The late medieval cookbook '' Du fait de cuisine'' ("On cookery") was written in 1420 in part to compete with the court of Burgundy by Maistre Chiquart, master chef of Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy
Amadeus VIII (4 September 1383 – 7 January 1 ...
'' the word "course" is used interchangeably with the word for serving.
See also
*
Cookbook
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food.
Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first cour ...
*
Culinary arts
Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called chefs or ...
*
Full course dinner
A full-course dinner is a dinner consisting of multiple dishes, or ''courses''. In its simplest form, it can consist of three or four courses; for example: first course, a main course, and dessert.
Basics
A multicourse meal or full-course d ...
*
hRecipe
hRecipe is a draft microformat for publishing details of recipes using (X)HTML on web pages, using HTML classes and ''rel'' attributes. In its simplest form, it can be used to identify individual foodstuffs, because the only required propertie ...
– a
microformat
Microformats (μF) are a set of defined HTML classes created to serve as consistent and descriptive metadata about an element, designating it as representing a certain type of data (such as contact information, geographic coordinates, events ...
for marking-up recipes in web pages
*
Italian meal structure
Italian meal structure is typical of the European Mediterranean region and differs from North, Central, and Eastern European meal structure, though it still often consists of breakfast (''colazione''), lunch (''pranzo''), and supper (''cena''). ...
*
List of desserts
A dessert is typically the sweet course that, after the entrée and main course, concludes a meal in the culture of many countries, particularly Western culture. The course usually consists of sweet foods, but may include other items. The word ...
*
Lists of foods
This is a categorically-organized list of foods. Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is produced either by Plants or Animals, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vit ...
*
Main course
A main course is the featured or primary dish in a meal consisting of several courses. It usually follows the entrée ("entry") course.
Typically, the main course is the meal that is the heaviest, heartiest, and most intricate or substantial o ...
*
Recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe.
His ...
*
Sadhya
Sadya ( ml, സദ്യ) is a meal of Kerala origin and of importance to all Malayalis, consisting of a variety of traditional vegetarian dishes usually served on a banana leaf in Kerala as lunch. Sadya means banquet in Malayalam. Sadya is ...
References
Food and drink terminology
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