So, just as you set out hand-painted, gold-leaf Louie Quinze 2-handled porcelain drinking bowls and fill the sterling silver George II soup tureen with consommé (made from Escoffier's personal recipe), a guest hands you a Tupperware filled with his grandfather's special recipe for canned-tuna-salad-with-chopped-egg-and-onions, the very recipe that Zaide made famous by making it every week for seudah slishi at Anshei Minsk.
Standards vary. It can be really hard for a guest invited by people doesn't know well - or not at all - to know whether the invitation is to a casual, family meal, or to the table of an accomplished cook whose carefully composed meal will be thrown off by an unexpected gift.
↧