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Home > Supper



This article is part
of the Meals series
Common meals...
Breakfast
Elevenses
Brunch
Lunch
Tea
Dinner
Supper
Dessert
See also...
Cuisine | Kitchens
Wikibooks: Cookbook

Supper is the evening meal - ordinarily the last meal of the day.

In the United Kingdom, supper is a small meal just before bedtime, often preceded by high tea; what a Canadian or American would refer to as supper, then, would be called dinner. However, "dinner" can be used to refer to lunch in Britain and parts of the United States and Canada.

In English-speaking countries such as Britain, Canada, and the United States, the evening meal is usually served in the early evening, sometime between six and nine p.m. However, supper customs vary in European cultures. In Spain, supper can be as late as ten or eleven p.m., although this is partly because Spain uses a time zone that is almost two hours off true local time. Suppers eaten outside the home, or suppers served to guests ("dinner parties"), can run quite late in English-speaking cultures as well.

Supper is the meal most commonly served as a form of entertainment, either at a restaurant, as a buffet or potluck, or as a sit-down dinner or banquet. Suppers can be held to enjoy the company of friends, to celebrate an event such as a wedding or birthday, as a community gathering, as official entertainment for dignitaries, or as a fundraising event.

Suppers often include two or more courses, may be served with wine, and are often followed by dessertDessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food but sometimes of a strongly flavored one, such as some cheeses. Some cultures do not have a separate final sweet course but mix sweet and savory dishes through. The main courses of supper often include meatMeat is animal flesh (mainly muscle tissue) used as food, sometimes with the exception of fish, other seafood, and poultry. Originally, the word meat meant simply "food". It is also used as a vulgar way to refer to the human body. see meat market. For the and vegetableVegetable is a nutritional and culinary term denoting any part of a plant that is commonly consumed by humans as food, but is not regarded as a culinary fruit, nut, herb, spice, or grain. In common usage, vegetables include the leaves (e. lettuce), stemss, but usually not fruitIn botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as food, the term usually refers to just those plant fruits that are sweet and fleshy, examples of which would be plum, apple, and or by itself.

The term "supper" is derived from the French souper, which is still used for this meal in Quebecois French and sometimes in Belgian French. It is related to soup, a food often served at supper.

Continental French for "supper" is dīner; in Spanish and Italian it is cena, and in Esperanto it is vespermango.


In Australian English, supper may refer to a late light dessert had some time after dinner.

See also: Last Supper, Lord's Supper


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