A childhood memory, my Proustian madeleine

The other day David served us a wonderful tomato salad in this dish. I had forgotten about this dish. My parents recently moved and gave Cazebonne a set of tableware they no longer had any use for, and among it, this porcelain serving dish. This dish, I had forgotten all about it; it must have been 20 years since I last saw it. It was brought out for almost every family meal, the only one large enough to hold enough food for our band of five boys. It would regularly overflow with spaghetti bolognese. It was not uncommon for one of us to utter the ritual phrase, 'Is that all?', as the dish arrived at the table. Yet we never went without...