Free All the King's Cooks by Peter Brears Page B

drinking rather than as a protective overall for messy eaters. He would then pick up his manchet or cheat loaf in his left hand, place it onhis trencher, slice it horizontally through the middle, cut the top into four strips and reassemble it back in its place as if was whole, and then cut the bottom into three strips and similarly reassemble it crust uppermost alongside. 8 When the pottage arrived, he spooned it up from the communal dish served to each mess. He might break off a piece of bread and dip it into the dish to absorb the liquid, then eat it with the spoon, but bread could not be crumbled into the dish because this would spoil it for others. 9 Once each diner had taken his share of the pottage he would clean his spoon with a piece of bread, which he would then eat, leaving the spoon clean for eating other dishes.
    When the main course arrived, he used the same method for eating the semi-liquid dishes, for the rich gravy accompanying roasts and for the succulent juice-soaked ‘sops’, or bread cubes, on which many meats and fish were presented. For vegetables and cereals such as frumenty or rice, he could spoon a quantity on to his trencher, to accompany the meats, always being careful to wipe the spoon clean on a piece of bread before moving on from one dish to another. Solid dishes of meat and fish, which came to the table in mess-sized joints, required a different approach – identical to that used by the carver at ceremonial meals. 10
    The matter of greatest importance was the use of the right and left hands. In essence, only the left hand could touch the communal dishes, leaving the right solely for gripping the personal knife or spoon or for lifting food to the lips with the fingers. 11 In this way there could be no risk of any dish being contaminated by anyone’s saliva. When a joint was served to a mess, the diners, probably giving precedence to the senior amongst them, took hold of the piece they wanted with the thumb and first two fingers of the left hand, cut it from the joint using their knife similarly held with the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand, the butt inside the palm. Still gripping it with the left hand, they would place the piece of meat on their trencher, holding it there until they had cut it up into small mouthfuls. If salt was required, it was lifted from the salt-cellar on the point of the knife and laid in a small heap on the trencher. 12 Prepared sauces such as mustard, served in open saucers, may have been taken in a similar way. Now the knife was cleaned with a piece of bread, as usual, and set down at the trencher, leaving the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand free to pick up each piece of meat in turn, dip it in the salt or sauce on the trencher, and lift it to the lips.

    42.   Place-settings The upper table is set with silver for a noble dining in the Chamber: a wooden trencher is set in his plate, his napkin and a manchet, cut in pieces, are to the left, his cup and wine flagon to the right, and a dish of food and a saucer of sauce before him. In contrast, the servant dining in the Great Hall (below) has a simple ash trencher, a pared cheat loaf and napkin to his left, his wooden drinking bowl and a leather jug of ale to his right, and a mess of pottage and a saucer of mustard ready to be shared with the other three who comprised his mess.
    Pies would be eaten in a similar manner. Holding the edge of the crust with the thumb and first two fingers of the left hand, the diner would make one cut from the centre of the pie to the left of his fingers and a second from half an inch (1.3cm) short of the centre to the right of his fingers, then lift the slice on to his trencher. The next diner followed suit, proceeding anticlockwise around the pie, so that no one handled anyone else’s piece and everyone took the same proportion of crust to filling. This preciseinformation does not come from any Tudor source, however, but from descriptions of late nineteenth