No subject

"When your Mayster will goe to his meate, take a towell aboute
     your necke, then take a cupbord cloth, a Basen, Ewer, & a Towell, to
aray your cupbord: couer your table, set on bread, salt & trenchers, the
salt before the bread, and trenchers before the salte. Set your napkyns
and spoones on the cupbord ready, and lay euery man a trencher, a napkyn,
& a spone. And if you haue mo messes then one at your maisters table,
consider what degree they be of, and thereafter ye may serue them: and
then set down euery thing at that messe as before, except your Caruing
knines. If ther be many Gentlemen or yomen, then set on bred, salt,
trenchers & spoones, after they be. set, or els after the custome of the
house."

Which certainly indicates to me that yeomen had access to salt, and that
there were multiple salt dishes.

If people didn't have access to salt routine, why do all those courtesy
books tell you not to dip your meat in the saltcellar?

> I'll have to wait until I get all my books unpacked so
> I can give you references, but at the moment I'm
> simply working from memory of mental notes I've made
> while studying the corpus of recipes I have available.

And I'm working from memory of the information about table service and
medieval buying that I have available.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
"Are you finished? If you're finished, you'll have to put down the spoon."