ABSTRACT
“Meat and drink are ordained and convenient to dinners and feasts, for at first meat is prepared and arrayed; guests are called together; forms and stools are set in the hall, and tables, cloths, and towels are ordained, disposed, and made ready. The special duties of the hosts of servants deemed essential to one’s dignity in the Middle Ages need not be enumerated in detail. Serviettes or small towels appear to have been used for wiping the hands before and after meals at least as early as the last quarter of the fifteenth century. With the guests in their seats all is in readiness for serving except that the food and drink must be tasted for persons of royal blood and of the higher nobility. Among the dainties served, at whatever time seemed most convenient, appear to have been fruits in some form, raw, dried, or preserved in syrup; nuts, chiefly almonds; various comfits in sugar; spices, and sweet wine.
