Soup.
Soup is generally served alone; however, pickles and crackers are a pleasant accompaniment for oyster-soup, and many serve grated cheese with macaroni and vermicelli soups. A pea or bean soup (without bread croutons) at one end of the table, with a neat square piece of boiled pork on a platter at the other end, is sometimes seen. When a ladleful of the soup is put in the soup-plate by the hostess, the butler passes it to the host, who cuts off a thin wafer-slice of the pork, and places it in the soup. The thin pork can be cut with the spoon. Hot boiled rice is served with gumbo soup. Well-boiled rice, with each grain distinct, is served in a dish by the side of the soup-tureen. The hostess first puts a ladleful of soup into the soup-plate, then a spoonful of the rice in the centre. This is much better than cooking the rice with the soup.
Sometimes little squares (two inches square) of thin slices of brown bread (buttered) are served with soup at handsome dinners. It is a French custom. Cold slaw may be served at the same time with soup, and eaten with the soup or just after the soup-plates are removed.