[Sca-cooks] re: salt and pepper

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Mercy Neumark wrote:

> >Given the habit of not passing the food, and the heft of the nef, I'd
> > >think that either salting at table didn't happen, or people brought
> > >their own small salt dishes, just as until a certain era, they brought
> > >their own eating utensils.  Whether they provided their own salt to >fill
> >the dish, or somehow had their little dish filled from the larger >nef, I
> >dunno.  But it doesn't seem reasonable that the nef and only >the nef was
> >used to serve salt to a roomful of people.
>
> After I taught a class at a local collegium in ceramics, one of the students
> handed me a wooden "salt celler".  I assumed that each person would have a
> little celler (sort of like the little chinese bowls that have hot mustard
> in them) to themselves and they would probably fill it from said heavy
> middle salt display.  Not sure if this is right or not.
>
> Could be a bad assumption on my part.
>
> --Arte

Oh, heck. ISTR one of the books of courtesy talking about making a little
divot on the bread trencher for the salt. And you were supposed to convey
the salt to the food on the point of the knife, not dip the food in the
salt. Or am I just hallucinating again?

Margaret