I think my
gradual defection from the social caste of those who gather for suppah came
from the feeling that I was unworthy. It was my father’s explanation to my
query as to why we were going to “dinner” when the sun had already set. It
upended my birthright as a Mainer and my ancestral claim to the language of supper’s
etymological origins.
It seems that
supper (the word) has several ingredients. Generally thought of as having
derived from the old French souper,
it is also related to soup, the Scandinavian soppa, and the German Suppe. If
its origins seem diffused and obscure, it is no less so with its definition.
Generally accepted as the last meal of the day, supper at the farmer’s table is
not the light snack in the evening as understood in some regions.
Dad explained that
supper (as it pronounced elsewhere in America) was a product of our agrarian
heritage. Well he might have said, “farmers work hard, up early, have a big
breakfast and toil ‘til noon, dinner time. Haying in the afternoon brought them
hungry to the supper table.” Of course, the industrial revolution was more of
an evolution with heavy work aplenty and long hours, brought home the hungry.
Supper endured.
But how could I,
an urbanite lay claim to supper? Complicating my conundrum even more over the
years was the fact that I, as a chef. I had prepared many a meal, and oft had
written menus for same. I have written breakfast menus, luncheon menus, brunch
menus, buffet menus, dinner menus. But never once, no not a single time, have I
ever written a supper menu.
It is all very
complicated. Can anybody tell me when the dinner-bell rings at the cookhouse,
setting wranglers on the run for grub? Dinner or supper? It seems to defy
definition. But once again we must return to the French of 1300 and the word disner, meaning to dine. Evolving over
time it has come to mean the heavy main meal of the day. But what and when is
dining done and by whom? This just maybe the next front in the struggle for egalitarian
society.
There is a danger
of shunning. One octogenarian resident of a nursing home where I once worked
told me that she had left home to work for Owens-Corning in Connecticut.
Returning to the homestead for a visit, she had the audacity to inquire as to
dinner in the evening. She was roundly accused of “putting on airs.”
“The divide
between different meanings of “dinner” is not cut-and-dried based on either
geographic of socioeconomic class. However, the use of the term dinner for the
midday meal is strongest among the working class. Among others dinner has come
to mean a meal out of the ordinary, denoting celebration or special
significance.” So says Wikipedia.
Supper, too, has its snobbish adherents. Among
the elite, and perhaps involving a secret knock upon the door, can be found
members of the “Supper Club.” These underground (often illegal) speakeasies of
epicure, so I am led to believe, feature the most exotic (and suspected of
being endangered) fare.
The interloper
causing such chaos is most likely an upstart birthed in the language around 1580
and grown to its maturity and common use by 1823. Lunch! Actually, an
abbreviation of luncheon whose etymology hearkens to the Anglo-Saxon nuncheon
or nunchin, meaning noon drink. In medieval Germany luncentach, a noon draught.
This staggering accommodation
to sustenance seems to have evolved as days lengthened by the advent of
artificial light. Heretofore dinner arrived after a long morning of labor and
advantaged by a profusion of daylight. Supper, a lighter meal in the gloom of
evening. The longer gap between meals, moving from liquid to solids made
necessary by longer hours of labor.
The most stable of meal times is breakfast.
Regardless of the time of day, be it cold pizza or ham and eggs, breakfast is
just what it says it is. And what mother said it is: the most important meal of
the day.
I have no idea
why I let rumination devolve to twaddle, but I do. For me dinner is an evening
meal, enhanced as much as possible by conversation and conviviality. But I will
hold steadfastly to Maineah roots, perhaps march in protest, should I have the
misfortune to see a sign announcing.
Bean Dinner
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