Up to the end of the eighteenth century it was common in our climes to bring all the dishes to table at the same time – soups and roasts, vegetables and fruit, bread and fish, pies, nuts, cake and poultry, hot and cold. But at the beginning of the 19th century an innovation made its way to Germany from Russia, later spreading further west. A menu’s different elements were now served in sequence; each course consisted of one dish, was served warm and presented to all the guests at the same time. This “Russian service”, in France sometimes called “service à l’allemande”, has long since become an ingrained feature of western culinary culture – and once and for all also defined what we now call “afters”, pudding, sweet or dessert.

But in fact “Russian service” is neither by any means a modern invention nor did it originate in Russia. In fact food was already dished up in a fixed order back in antiquity, culminating in sweets, fruit and spices to help with digestion. Later, in the Middle Ages, pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg were also served as a kind of dessert – although not for health or culinary reasons, but because the costly spices allowed the host to show off his wealth. And whoever could afford it even served pears, medlars and shelled nuts, waffles and mulled wine for the last course.

In China, dessert traditionally consisted of fruit, followed by all manner of nibbles such as cured meat with ginger, peppered dried fish or salt pickled beans. The custom of serving salty foods with dessert was enthusiastically embraced in England. Gentlemen wanting to sip a glass of port after dinner were served so-called savouries, such as “Angel on horseback” (oysters wrapped in bacon), which are now more common as hors d’œuvres. At one of the most legendary spreads in Roman history, Trimalchio’s banquet described by Petronius in “Satyricon”, dessert consisted of oysters, mussels and snails.

Serving up sweet food exclusively at the end of a meal is an invention of modernity. One Italian menu from 1488 starts with sugared pine kernels and sweet almond cake, another from 1536 with marzipan, pistachio tart and slices of sugared orange.