How to plan a menu

What to balance across the courses

• Richness. One rich course is a pleasure and three is punishing. If the main is heavy, the starter and pudding should be light.
• Texture. Do not serve three soft things. Something should crunch somewhere.
• Colour. A brown starter, a brown main and a brown pudding looks exactly as it sounds.
• Temperature. A cold starter, a hot main and a room-temperature pudding is easier to serve and more interesting to eat.
• Intensity. Something highly spiced followed by something delicate wastes the delicate one.
• Repetition. Cream in two courses, pastry in two courses, or the same herb throughout — check for these deliberately.
• Cuisine. It need not be consistent, but each course should be internally coherent.

Building one that can actually be cooked

Decide the main first and fit everything around it.

1. Choose the main course, and check what it needs at the last minute and how much oven and hob it occupies.
2. Pick a starter that needs nothing at the last minute — cold, room temperature, or something that sits happily.
3. Pick a pudding that is finished entirely in advance, or that goes in the oven as the main comes out.
4. Now check the oven. Two things at different temperatures at the same time is the commonest failure.
5. Check the hob rings too, and the fridge space, and how many serving dishes you own.
6. Write a timing plan backwards from when you want to eat, including resting and reheating.
7. Then cut one thing. Every menu is better with one fewer element than the one you first wrote.

Reliable shapes

Cold starter, braise, cold pudding

Almost nothing to do once people arrive. The most forgiving shape there is.

Soup, roast, tart

Traditional and workable, but the oven does two jobs. Bake the tart first and serve it warm.

Shared plates then one large dish

Informal, and the shared plates absorb late arrivals.

Everything on the table at once

A curry, a tagine, a roast with sides. Less serving, more generous, and easier.

One showpiece, everything else simple

The most common professional advice, and it is right.

Three courses from one oven at one temperature

Ideal if you can arrange it, and worth designing around.

Accompaniments, which are half the meal

What a main course is served with decides whether it works more often than the main course does. A rich braise wants something plain and starchy to absorb it and something sharp and green beside it. A plain grilled piece of fish wants a sauce and something with texture.

The useful test is whether every element on the plate is doing a different job: something to carry, something rich, something fresh, something sharp, something crisp. Two things doing the same job is the definition of a dull plate.

And a good accompaniment is often the cheapest part of a menu to get right — bread, rice, a plain potato, a lemon-dressed leaf — which is why it is worth as much attention as the expensive part.

Common questions