A Georgian Dessert Table

This room setting at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, shows a table set for dessert in a prosperous middle class household in England about 1760 - 1770.

It is laid with Worcester dessert plates and dishes of that date, wine and syllabub glasses and silver from the 1730's.

The portrait by Gainsborough dates from about 1750.

Desert was the final course of dinner. A well-to-do household would use a different porcelain service form that used for the main courses.

The table was cleared of salts and pepper pots and other items used for savoury food. The servants would bring in an array of new dishes, which would include fresh, stewed and preserved fruit, sweetmeats, fondants, nuts, biscuitss, jellies and syllabubs in glasses.

Syllabub is a mixture of wine, whipped cream and orange or lemon juice. Sweet wine would be served.

I have always been fond of Georgian things and this room at the museum had me drooling. I love the Worcester plates, the silver candlesticks and how they used figurines as part of their centerpiece.

It was a time, too, when dinner was the event of an evening -- not just sustenance but the entertainment as well.

Perhaps next time we have a dinner party, I should take a page from the Georgian English and reset the table with dessert, serve a glass of syllabub as well as some sweetmeats -- for I do have some sweetmeat forks which I brought home from England.

It's Thursday and time to visit Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Tablescape Thursday. Visit Susan and see all the great tables this Thursday!