[littl3chocobo]

it is def different now. before it was very unusual for people to try cooking for the very first time as an adult with no prior education on the matter while now it is not only expected that many persons of any age will be coming in with little or no abilities but it is also expected that regardless of how much you know about cooking that you will not keep an encyclopedic knowledge of all the dishes you already have made(that and for the sake of personal taste any meal that the cook goes back to from time to time will be modified some to suit their taste anyway)

when i say as a plate i mean like the picture in your first post. where the food is served outside of the aspic instead of in it(and yes i do see there there are bts of things inside but the bulk of the meal is served on top of it)

kinda. when i say cold set i mean something thoroughly chilled up until the time it is set out on the table to be eaten/looked at. some aspics (mostly inedible ones) were used as a preservation measure much like salting or smoking was

i cannot say how ubiquitous it was but from 1900-1970 or so there were soooo many cookbooks that relied on tinned and boxed foods to make fancy dinners/desserts and i totally get why. it was quite easy for many foods to spoil in shipping and this was a viable way to have foods that came from all over the world so one was not stuck with whatever was being grown/hunted/harvested within the 50-100 mile scope of local agriculture. places like greenland could have pineapple and places like alaska could have milk


this is fair too XD the texture /is/ pretty weird hahahaha


from what i know on the matter NCS3RR4N is correct, it is less that it is dainty and more that it shows that you have the time and resources to make something extravagant. it is less work to make a sandwich with a few slices of aubergine and a smear of garlic-mayo on some regular bread than it is to make an aubergine caviar and serve it on toasted slices of diagonal-sliced baguette topped with chilled mayonnaise rosettes but the latter looks much more impressive at a party even if they are made close to the same ingredients