The first dinner party

Text 1: My Début as a Cook, by Emily Garside

An original autobiography written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

I had been married six weeks, and had a cookery book, a new range and a great deal of confidence, when Edward told me that his employer, Mr Forbes, and his wife would dine with us on Thursday. I had never in my life cooked anything more ambitious than toast. I resolved upon a boiled fowl with white sauce, a fish, and a tart, and I spent three days and most of a sovereign in preparation.

The fish fell to pieces in the kettle. The white sauce turned to something resembling paste. The fowl, which the book promised would be done in an hour, was pink at the bone after two. I stood in the scullery with tears running into the custard and thought that Edward’s career was certainly ended.

Mrs Forbes came out to me, took off her rings, and with her own hands rescued the sauce with a little milk and a great deal of whisking. She told me that her own first dinner had set fire to the curtains. We dined at nine, the gentlemen pronounced everything excellent, and I learnt that evening that a kindness is worth more than a recipe.

Text 2: Risotto for Six, by Tom Varga

An original contemporary memoir.

In my second year at university, newly in love and wildly overconfident, I invited my girlfriend’s parents to dinner in our shared student house. I had watched a lot of cookery programmes. I had never actually cooked anything that did not come out of a packet. I planned a starter, a mushroom risotto and a chocolate fondant, and I spent most of my student loan instalment on ingredients.

The starter, a salad, was fine, because it involved no cooking. The risotto was another matter. It started as soup and ended as cement, with nothing in between. The fondants, which were supposed to ooze, came out of the oven as six small black hockey pucks. I stood in our grim little kitchen, smoke alarm wailing, and genuinely considered climbing out of the window.

It was her mother who came in, rolled up her sleeves without a word, and turned the cement into something like risotto with a kettle of hot stock and a lot of stirring. She told me she once gave her own in-laws food poisoning. Everyone said the meal was lovely. I learned that night that people remember how you treated them far longer than what you fed them.

Both writers describe cooking a meal for important guests for the first time.

What are the similarities between the writers’ experiences of cooking the meal?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.