[Bryn-gwlad] trenchers and plateware

[Coblaith Mhuimhneach]

Clare wrote:
> Other cultures also had wooden trenchers, clay plates and other such 
> eating ware.

Dora Smith asked:
> Since the Romans ate from plates and bowls, why would not the European 
> nobility have done so in medieval times?

You have to remember that "the European nobility" and "medieval times" 
are not terms describing a single culture and generation.  If you 
really want to discuss how any given group of people lived, you have to 
specify them.

There were certainly people throughout the SCA's core millennium who 
ate from plates and bowls.  Art and artifacts from early, middle, and 
late period, in a variety of settings, clearly establish that.  (Quite 
a few examples can be found among the sites listed by Karen Larsdatter 
at <http://www.geocities.com/karen_larsdatter/feastgear.htm>.)

There were also people who used bread trenchers, sometimes in 
conjunction with less disposable dinnerware.  Their fashionability is 
not so surprising, really, when you remember that the bread trencher 
was the medieval equivalent of a modern paper plate--cheap, readily 
available, and designed to be eaten from, then discarded along with its 
sops and scraps.  (Of course, I mean "cheap compared one-to-one with 
plates made of longer-lived material", and "readily available to the 
sort of people who can afford to buy things just to throw them away".)  
If modern Americans, faced with diminishing forests, mountainous 
landfills, and at least a dozen different types of inexpensive, 
reusable tableware, can't resist convenient clean-up, why should we 
expect well-to-do medieval Europeans were any different?

There's some information on trenchers on the Gode Cookery site 
<http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto07.htm> and in the 
Florilegium 
<http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BREADS/trenchers-msg.html>, if 
you're interested.



Coblaith Mhuimhneach
<mailto:Coblaith at sbcglobal.net>