SC - more medieval food myths!
Serian
serian at uswest.net
Thu Nov 16 08:31:21 PST 2000
Connected to the recent discussion on trenchers...
I was browsing in the online "Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse,"
and I came across a 15th centruy serving manual. It goes into great detail
about "voiders" -- the dishes which were used to transfer scraps and
leftovers to the alms vessel in the kitchen. After every course, the squires
and other attendents gather up the trenchers, as well as broken breads and
broken meats, and put them in voiders. Also, the almoner goes up to the
lord's table and takes "of dyuerse metes as it may goodly be forborne
and augment ther wyth the almes dyshe, and all this in the lordes
presence".
So not only were the trenchers *not* eaten by the feasters, but partial
loaves of bread were also taken away and replaced with whole ones at
the beginning of each course.
The URL for the serving manual is:
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/c/cme/cme-
idx?type=HTML&rgn=TEI.2&byte=11992541
Sorry, my mail program insists on wrapping that line. If that doesn't work,
try the main page at:
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/c/cme/cme-idx
The same site also contains the Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks. All the
texts on the site can be searched, so you can look for all the occurences of
"garleke" or "canel".
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net
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