Discussion Groups / English Usage / October 2006

Marius Hancu <NOSPAM@videotron.ca> had it:

"Roast dinner" consists of roast meat (chicken, beef, pork, lamb),
potatoes in some form (roast, mashed, boiled - not so often chips)
and one or two types of traditional vegetable (carrots, peas, leeks,
cabbage).  There will almost certainly be gravy and there may be
stuffing or Yorkshire pudding.

"Roast meat with salad" is just a description of what you can see on  
a plate - it's not a standard meal.

Without further context it's difficult to be sure.

A roast dinner will comprise slices of roast meat, roast potatoes, and a
couple of other vegetables.  There will almost certainly be a starter (=
AmE: "appetizer") and a pudding or dessert.

A "roast meat with salad" is a large mixed salad with cold roast meat,
served as one dish.  It's normally referred to just by the name of the
meat, as in "beef salad", or "chicken salad".  The salad will be lettuce
(or rocket, or similar leaf), tomato, and (most of) cucumber, celery,
radish, (spring) onion, and perhaps other things.

That's part of it, sure, but the salad is just one course, albeit the
main one, whereas the roast dinner is the whole meal, with two or three
courses.

If I were promised a "roast dinner" I should look forward to slices of roast
meat served with potatoes (probably both boiled and roast) and other
vegetables. There would be traditional accompaniments such as Yorkshire
pudding and horseradish sauce with beef, apple sauce with pork and so on. A
rich gravy would be served rather than some more elaborate sauce.  I think
there would be the implied promise of a pudding for "afters" - apple pie
especially - and perhaps one would also get a "starter" such as prawn
cocktail. That's what you'd expect at an ordinarily decent pub in Wiltshire
for Sunday lunch, and it's what many would eat in their own homes if they
could summon up the energy to prepare and cook it and do the enormous amount
of washing-up it would entail.

"A roast meat" suggests perhaps just the meat without the rest of what I've
described, though perhaps with a small serving of a chef-type sauce and with
a salad served separately. The meal would be, at its best, elegant rather
than hearty: lower calorie and less work.

Alan Jones

In alt.usage.english, Marius Hancu wrote:

"Dinner" is a meal; "meat with salad" is a course.

"Roast dinner" is a traditional British meal, often of three courses.
The main course consists of hot roast meat (beef, lamb, pork, chicken,
turkey, etc) served sliced, with roast potatoes, possibly boiled
potatoes, and two or more additional vegetables (peas, carrots, Brussels
sprouts, parsnips, etc) and a rich gravy. Other traditional
accompaniments include Yorkshire pudding and horseradish sauce (with
beef), mint sauce (with lamb), crackling and apple sauce (with pork),
herb stuffing (with chicken), etc. I'm sure you get the idea.

Roast dinner is traditionally served in the middle of the day, even in
areas such as the south of England where the word "dinner" normally
refers to the evening meal. It's especially common as a family meal on
Sundays and (especially with turkey) on Christmas Day.

"Roast meat with salad" is a comparatively simple affair, just sliced
cold sliced roast meat (=AmE "cold cuts") with a salad consisting of
lettuce, tomato, cucumber, spring onions (=AmE "scallions"), etc.

Those formulae would have been strictly adhered to in, say, the 1960s.
With today's very different lifestyles and the availability of more
exotic ingredients, there's a great deal of variation.