[Sca-cooks] Size of Trenchers

David Friedman ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Sat Jul 4 23:12:46 PDT 2009


I've been corresponding with a lady who is thinking of trying to set 
up a period cookshop at Pennsic next year. One issue is what tos 
serve the food on. Bread bowls are modern, paper plates are 
strikingly modern and cost something, reusable plates have to be 
washed and risk theft.

One obvious answer is bread trenchers--which raises the question of 
how big they were. The only figure I can find is from _Le Menagier_ 
and seems to be 4"x6", which would be awfully small for serving food 
on. I'm wondering if we have other sources, and if one can make a 
reasonable case that trenchers were sometimes substantially larger 
than that--large enough to serve moderns as plates.

Anyone have anything?
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com



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