Plates

 The cabinets with our plates is in a corner of our kitchen with two exterior walls. During the winter that is the coldest corner. From at least December through February it is well to get dinner plates out of the cabinet to warm up for some time before dinner.

I was struck some years ago in reading Disraeli's novel Coningsby by the paragraph beginning

Lord Monmouth’s dinners at Paris were celebrated. It was generally agreed that they had no rivals; yet there were others who had as skilful cooks, others who, for such a purpose, were equally profuse in their expenditure. What, then, was the secret spell of his success? The simplest in the world, though no one seemed aware of it. His Lordship’s plates were always hot: whereas at Paris, in the best appointed houses, and at dinners which, for costly materials and admirable art in their preparation, cannot be surpassed, the effect is always considerably lessened, and by a mode the most mortifying: by the mere circumstance that every one at a French dinner is served on a cold plate.

Disraeli goes on to blame the custom on the poor quality of French porcelain:

 The reason of a custom, or rather a necessity, which one would think a nation so celebrated for their gastronomical taste would recoil from, is really, it is believed, that the ordinary French porcelain is so very inferior that it cannot endure the preparatory heat for dinner.

 No doubt French manufactures have improved over the last couple of centuries.