Quote:
Originally Posted by skysidhe
Served in bread bowls and eaten with knifes. No forks, no spoons.
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Spoons, always, always. Table forks of the Middle Ages, Renaissance onward, and only spottily used at first, popular first in Italy. Two tines.
The bread bowl is a latterday mutant edition of the bread trencher -- the first sliced bread, incidentally. Loaf bread, the crusts cut away, trimmed into square, stiff slabs for pretty, usually five per diner: four in a square on the tablecloth, the fifth pyramided upon the middle of the square and stuff transferred or served to that. The pantler had a set of special knives to do the job for setting the table. They took their soups and stews in bowls back in the day. They would have been quite amused at the stew in a bread bowl, and would likely have adopted it, but I don't hear they actually came up with that one.
Kidding aside, I still take my medieval and medieval-oid food seriously.