Subject: Request:medieval feast

From: [email-masked] (Miriam Wolfe)
Date: 16 Sep 1994 05:02:29 GMT

I want recipes to cook a medieval feast, with my kids.  We have read a few
>kids books that describe the royal banquet.  They didn't have plates, they
ate
>off trenchers, which are a kind of crusty bread that they put their food on
>and the trenchers absorbed the gravies and spices off the food and then they
>ate the trenchers.
>
>Anybody have a recipe for trenchers and everything from soup to nuts (so to

---

From: [email-masked] (Jane Beckman)
Date: 16 Sep 94 22:53:24 GMT

>
>They didn't have plates, they ate
Actually, you usually gave the trenchers to the servants, and
*they* ate the trenchers.  Servants got the leftovers from the
higher-up meals, as well.

--
  Jilara   [[email-masked]]
That's how freedom will end: not with a bang, but with a rustle of file
folders.  If you love any of your rights, defend all of them!
-Joe Chew, on the net

---

From: [email-masked] (charles nevile)
Date: 27 Sep 1994 06:12:25 GMT

[....]

Plates were certainly around - it is correct that trenchers were given
either to servants, or more commonly to 'the poor'. We use them quite
frequently, and we just use a heavy loaf, round and about a handspan or
more across, and thick enough to slice donwe the middle (more or less).

They work remarkably well, but people tend to eat them as they go, so
that they are both too full to enjoy the later and nicest parts of the
feast, and in any case have nothing left to put it on...

have fun

charles
ragnar hraldsson, new varangian guard, vlachernai garrison