An entrée (, ; ) in modern French table service and that of much of the English-speaking world (apart from the United States and parts of Canada) is a dish served before the main course of a meal. Outside North America, it is generally synonymous with the terms hors d'oeuvre, appetizer, or starter. It may be the first dish served, or it may follow a soup or other small dish or dishes. In the United States and parts of Canada, the term entrée refers to the main dish or the only dish of a meal. Early use of the term The word entrée as a culinary term first appears in print around 1536, in the Petit traicté auquel verrez la maniere de faire cuisine, in a collection of menus at the end of the book. There, the first stage of each meal is called the entree de table (entrance to the table); the second stage consists of potaiges (foods boiled or simmered "in pots"); the third consists of one or more services de rost (meat or fowl "roasted" in dry heat); and the last is the issue de table (departure from the table). These four stages of the meal appear consistently in this order in all the books that derive from the Petit traicté. The terms entree de table and issue de table are organizing words, "describing the structure of a meal rather than the food itself". The terms potaiges and rost indicate cooking methods but not ingredients. The menus, though, give some idea of both the ingredients and the cooking methods that were characteristic of each stage of the meal. Sausages, offal, and raw "watery" fruits (oranges, plums, peaches, apricots, and grapes) were apparently considered uniquely appropriate for starting the meal, as those foods appear only in the entree de table. Other dishes considered appropriate for the entree stage may also appear in later stages of the meal, such as venison cooked in various ways (in the entree, potaiges, and rost services) and savory pies and sauced meats (in the entree and rost services). The distribution of dishes is very similar to that of the menus in the Ménagier de Paris, written 150 years before the Petit traicté. "Classical Order" of service The stages of the meal underwent several significant changes between the mid-16th and mid-17th century. Notably, the entrée became the second stage of the meal and potage