How come that in the USA the main course is called entree?

Question

I'm on vacation in Florida right now, and I noticed that the word Entree that in Europe is used for "starter" or "appetizer" in the USA is used for the main course. Anyone knows how this happened?

Answer 1

Instead of an American error, it looks more like a case of simple
reasonable linguistic divergence based on the changing nature of menus over the last century.

First of all, the big dictionary added nothing much, except to say that the translation of "entre'e" (BrE) to French is "entre'e", and vice versa, whereas the translation of "main" to French is "plat prinicpal" (which wasn't included in the little dictionary, which said "plat de r'esistance"). Neither dictionary gave a translation from the American "entree" to French, but we can assume that it would be "plat principal".

However:
The traditional French menu, (according to Larousse, and to an 1895 American cookbook I own) went something like:

Soup.
hors d'oeuvres or/and fish
entree (or entrees)
[i.e. the third course, as larousse points out, but not the
last, as a previous post implied]
roti
final course (perhaps)
dessert.

What I reckon happened was as necessity of the main (roti ==
roast (usually fowl in France)) course waned (more slowly, I suspect, in NZ, OZ and Britain than in the US), the entree (which can cover a variety of dishes which would be considered mains now (but then, so would some of the hors d'oeuvres and final courses)) moved towards the beginning of the meal in , and , and towards the end of the (truncated) mean in .

Since a modern (formal) (western of course, chinese menus put soup last, for example) menu goes something more like:

hors d'oeuvres
soup or entree
main
dessert and cheese (or cheese and dessert if you are french)

the English useage bears more resemblance to the traditional one, in terms of the formal/social/ritual aspects of hosting a dinner, whereas, since modern mains are rarely roasts, the American useage bears more resemblance to the food which was traditionally served for this course.

Since the American cookbook I referred to (The Table, (2nd ed) 1895) followed the formal, old fashioned, French usage, it is clear that the divergence happened after that date.

Answer 2

In Europe, Entree is NOT used for "starter" or "appetizer" at all. It has changed its meaning from the days (nearly 200 years ago) when a proper dinner had six or eight or eleven or more courses. Firstly Frenchified names for them, then a reduction in their number, have left us with "entree" as the name for the main course. Originally it was the course which announced "okay, playtime's over, now for some serious eating" - you were entering on the real business of dinner.

Answer 3

The word is French and if memory serves, it means opening or beginning. Most of the cooking terms used are French BTW. The French perfected cooking skills and codified them.

Answer 4

Because back in the good ol' days the colored people who prepaired the meals were lynched "entree"s.

Answer 5

We are jacked up.