The Ladies Night In at Netherfield ( which turns inot an unwanted sleepover but nevertheless, is the price selfish people have to pay for insisting on company..but I digress)

has a light supper menu. ;on the table we can see a dish of boiled lobster( usually served with a butter sauce) shrimp/crayfish or prawn, a fricasse of something - with apsparagus, I think( on Jane's right) and a cheese( looks like a farmhouse cheddar-type to me,wrapped in a white cloth- and some form of trifles/syllabubs,arranged in the glasses on the same sliver salver as the cheese.It was not unusual to place sweet and savoury dishes on the table as part of the second course of a meal at this time.this was probably teh second course.

Lobsters and all sorts of fish and shell fish were commomn foods during this era(.My "poshest" cookbook of the era,the New London Family Cook by Duncan MacDonlad,chef at the Bedford Coffee House Covent Garden, gives very presise details as to byuying fish- whatto look for and what to avoid,andincludes over 30 pages of recipies for fish dshes, not including fish sauces whichare contianed ina spearte portion of teh book.)

But remember, no fish on Mondays, as Mrs Bennet remarks in Chapter 13- ..(I konw- but please forgive me, it gives nothing away!)

good lord! how unlucky! there is not a bit of fish to be got to-day. Lydia, my love, ring the bell. I must speak to Hill this moment.""

The fishing fleet did not operate on Mondays and.as a consequence, fish could not be marketed on Mondays.