Special Edition: What's on the table at Downton Abbey?

A TV critic bites into the cuisine of “Downton Abbey: Grand Finale”

Formal dinners are constantly dying off and roaring back into fashion, and predicting their rise and fall is as simple as watching Wall Street’s stock tickers. When we’re feeling flush, a sensation most of us haven’t enjoyed in quite some time, some of us invest in matching plates and flatware. Families and couples of a certain age might even haul out grandma’s treasured china and give it a good dusting — that is, if you didn’t offload it at a garage sale or eBay. We might even try our hand at preparing a menu with multiple courses.

But who has the time or the energy to polish silverware, transfer mains and sides into nice dishes, and lay a table? Follow-up question: Who has the room in their home for a dedicated dining table?

As it turns out, I do have a modest space for that express purpose that has seen its share of fancy dinners … long ago. While I still experiment with la grande cuisine, as Julia Child invited us to do every now and then, on those rare weekend occasions I cook for two or three, not 10 or more. My dining table is cluttered with mail, yet-to-be-shipped jars of homemade jam and, more often than not, an enormous, slumbering pile of Maine Coon. So we sink into the couch, plates on laps, clothed in pants with elastic waistbands.

Thanks to TV, though, we can live vicariously through period dramas where people had staff to prepare their dinner and wash the dishes afterward, a perk of being born into high society. On “Downton Abbey,” however, downstairs living doesn’t look like the worst fate in the world.

Six seasons of TV and three feature films depict servitude as a benevolent state, even a jolly one. It’s easy for the servants to know their place when the lords and ladies treat them as something akin to family — the kind of almost-relatives who fix their morning eggs or button their flies.

I made myself presentable to catch a screening of “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,” mainly to evaluate whether the spread lives up to the title’s promise. Happily, it does, in all the usual ways. Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is caught up in scandal, again. Lord Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) is fussy and reluctant to let go of the reins. Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) is soothing; Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) is starched to the verge of hurting himself; Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) is pregnant; and Molesley (Kevin Doyle) is an idiot.

The gang’s all here, but times have changed. It’s 1930, and like everybody else, the Earl of Grantham is having problems with his cash flow.

But the food is still fabulous. Most people watch “Downton” for the tart, gently comedic exchanges and adorably antiquated decorum. I keep my eyes peeled to decipher what’s on the plates and the butcher block. “The Grand Finale” presents the usual British culinary mainstays, like Yorkshire puddings, shortbreads, roasts and vegetables. I also noticed a tray of golden madeleines with their telltale bumps on the counter, and lusciously swirled pavlovas bejeweled with dark berries during a meal.

But a couple of special items caught my eye at the prepping station — specifically, rows of elegantly fluted scallop shells. See, while the nobles are fretting over what to do about Mary’s divorce-induced social leprosy, a retiring Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) taps Daisy (Sophie McShera) to put together a do-or-die feast to win the Crawleys’ snobby neighbors back to their side.

News of a special dinner guest, superstar playwright Noël Coward, transforms Daisy into an Iron Chef: “Well, tonight he’s getting Coquilles Saint-Jacques and Gressingham Duck, and he better like it.”

Talk about two old school dishes that are doable, theoretically, for home chefs desiring to replicate the former dining experience in their more modest castles. Coquilles Saint-Jacques is essentially a frou-frou description for scallops au gratin, more often prepared as a casserole than in those magical shells which are harder to find these days.

But it’s even easier to score a whole duck, if not a Gressingham, in American grocery stores. Pekin duck is the most widely available variety in the United States, and smaller than the bird Daisy was working with. However, that choice underscores the regal reputation of the meat, along with bolstering theories as to why Americans don’t eat it more often.

Meanwhile, at the Arconia …

Funny enough, duck shows up as a wealth indicator on another recent pop culture hit, albeit one set nearly a century after the events of “The Grande Finale.”  Still, the fifth season of “Only Murders in the Building” holds a few thematic commonalities with what the Crawleys are going through. Like our lords and ladies, Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) are reckoning with massive changes hitting the Arconia and New York more broadly. Both are under siege by billionaires.

The podcast trio, though, is only concerned with three who may be linked to the murder of their building’s beloved doorman, Lester (Teddy Coluca). So they invite the most suspicious-looking one, Jay Pflug (played by Logan Lerman), to dinner, and are surprised when the other two, Camila White and Bash Steed (portrayed by Renée Zellweger and Christoph Waltz), crash the gathering.

Luckily, Charles has planned for the occasion. “If you invite someone over at seven, you have to serve them dinner. It’s a rule of society,” he says, waving around his great grandmother’s recipe for duck à l’orange and adding, “It’s a billionaire’s delight!”

To this, Oliver sarcastically replies, “No one needs your 17th-century old lady food and outdated social rules.”

Oliver’s skepticism is both on brand and justified. Duck à l’orange has a reputation as an archaic 1970s atrocity owing to American cooks bastardizing what should be a glistening garnish into a sickly-sweet goop.

Except in this instance, Charles is right. The billionaires absolutely expect to be fed — or say they do, but cut out before dinner is done. What happens instead is better. The three gather at a table to enjoy their good friend’s efforts with a side of green beans. Even Oliver, a man who long subsisted on dips, has nothing bad to say.

Society has changed extremely over the past century, but this much is sacrosanct: Important people expect courses. Indeed, the most important people, friends and family, are worth that bother.

Duck à l’orange is simpler to make than you might think

Much as there is for its fans to mourn about the alleged closure of the “Downton Abbey” franchise, I won’t miss the increasingly tone-deaf genuflection before the glamour of British privilege. But I will yearn for more scenes of sublime, ridiculous formal dining experiences.  

Every night, the gentlemen suit up and the ladies don their finery, although nothing is as fancy as when the family hosts balls or extremely fancy dinners for special guests. “Who does that anymore?” I often ask myself, sometimes while fishing a grain of cooked rice out of my stretched-out sports bra.

Then I wonder, maybe I should every once in a while. Duck would be a fine option. It’s simpler to prepare than one might think, whether one goes Daisy’s route and simply roasts it or, like Charles, adds his great grandmother’s zesty sauce.

I like to rub mine with around four tablespoons of five spice powder, ¼ cup of brown sugar, one tablespoon each of ginger, garlic, and kosher salt, and enough olive oil to make a paste. Before that, I gently pierce its skin with a knife, just enough to release the precious fat after it liquefies.)

The version of duck à l’orange St. Julia originally introduced to home cooks via “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” however, retains its regal savory flavor and simplicity. I’ve been revisiting episodes of “The French Chef” on Prime Video, and she presents her preparation technique in a first-season installment that aired in 1963.

The way we view the dish, dining, duck, and the art of entertaining has changed wildly in the years since, but these recent reminders on TV and the grand finale of “Downton Abbey” have made me rethink my abandonment of extravagant dinner parties. Life is short and particularly ugly right now. Break out the nice plates and a clean tablecloth. Dress up a space for your dearest friends. Make the duck. We may not be earls or billionaires, but we can eat like them.

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