What Are: Trenchers and Sops

From movies with a medieval setting or renaissance fairs and reenactments we get the idea that people in the Middle Ages had absolutely no table manners at all.  They wolfed down meat off the bone, stuffed food in their mouths with both hands, and swashed it all down with copious amounts of wine or beer, throwing bones and leftovers onto the rushes to be consumed or not by the dogs. 

Well, not quite. 

A Medieval place setting consisted of a thick slice of coarse, whole grained bread often made for the purpose and sometimes hollowed out like a bread bowl.  This was known as a trencher.  Individual portions of food would be spooned or speared from a serving dish and laid in this trencher, with sauces poured on top.  Each diner had a knife to cut their meat and a spoon to dip up sauces or soups and stews, along with a cup or a goblet-style drinking vessel.  Salt was the most common spice and came from a receptacle known as a salt cellar, which set at a specific place or places on the table.  A more elaborate salt cellar would be on the dais or top table where the royal or noble family ate, lesser containers on the other tables in the hall.  Diners sat at the table according to their rank, with lower status servants sitting furthest away from the top table and thus "below the salt". 

Diners did eat with their fingers, forks only being used as serving utensils where they were used at all.  But there was an etiquette to this.  A diner used only the fingers of a one hand to reach the serving platter.  Anyone who used the same hand to access the serving platter and put items in their mouths risked stares, glares or even a telling off.  Napkins were available to most diners, who were expected to use them, and sometimes a bowl with water to at least wash the fingers.  Cramming one's mouth full, belching, flatulence, picking one's teeth with one's fingers or other gross behavior was just as frowned upon then as it was now.  Pulling bones or pieces of food out of one's mouth without some attempt to conceal it with the napkin was considered boorish. 

Bread came in many varieties.  A finer grind of wheat flower made manchet loaves, smaller round loaves of bread eaten with a meal.  There was also coarse brown bread that could be broken into chunks and used to sop up soups, sauces and gravies, hence the name for this food, a sop.  Diners accessed food according to their station in the household, with the royals or nobles having the most dishes or courses of food, and others lower down the social ladder receiving fewer portions.  For the poorest, sops might be a substantial part of the meal, thus the idea of tossing someone a sop, as in doing something to pacify or shut someone up without really addressing their need.

Dogs might be present in the hall, but there were other uses for the leftover trenchers.  Diners could eat a portion of the bread to get the rest of the sauce or finish off their stew, if they were so inclined.  Or, the trenchers and excess sops along with leftover scraps could be given to the poor in lieu of monetary alms, not necessarily tossed to the dogs.  Tossing bones over one's shoulder to the dogs, a la Charles Laughton's caricatures of Henry VIII was also not done, either.  Nor was leaving bones in the serving dish.  Bones would be left in the trenchers to be gathered up by the servants whose job it was to clean the hall after the meal was over.  Dogs were given their own sops, porridge, gruel or other food, but not in the main hall.