A trencher is a type of tableware

Tableware

Tableware is the dishes or dishware , dinnerware , or china used for setting a table, serving food, and for dining. Tableware can be meant to include flatware and glassware...

, commonly used in medieval cuisine

Medieval cuisine

Medieval cuisine includes the foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, a period roughly dating from the 5th to the 16th century...

. A trencher was originally a piece of stale bread

Staling

Staling, or "going stale", is a chemical and physical process in bread and other foods that reduces their palatability. Stale bread is dry and leathery.-Mechanism and effects:...

, cut into a square shape by a carver, and used as a plate

Plate (dishware)

A plate is a broad, concave, but mainly flat vessel on which food can be served. A plate can also be used for ceremonial or decorative purposes.-Materials:...

, upon which the food could be placed before being eaten. At the end of the meal, the trencher could be eaten with sauce, but was more frequently given as alms

Alms

Alms or almsgiving is a religious rite which, in general, involves giving materially to another as an act of religious virtue.It exists in a number of religions. In Philippine Regions, alms are given as charity to benefit the poor. In Buddhism, alms are given by lay people to monks and nuns to...

 to the poor. Later the trencher evolved into a small plate of metal or wood. People used this utensil to eat the many stews and porridges that made up their daily diet.

Terms

An individual salt dish or squat open salt cellar

Salt cellar

A salt cellar is a vessel, usually small and made of glass or silver, used on the table for holding salt. An individual salt dish or squat open salt cellar placed near a trencher was called a trencher salt...

 placed near a trencher was called a trencher salt (see pic above).

A "trencherman" is one devoted to eating and drinking, often to excess; one with a hearty appetite. A secondary use, generally archaic, is one who frequents another's table, in essence a pilferer of another's food.

A "trencher-fed pack" is a pack of foxhounds

Foxhound

A foxhound is a type of large hunting hound. Foxhounds hunt in packs and, like all scent hounds, have a strong sense of smell. They are used in hunts for foxes, hence the name. When out hunting they are followed usually on horseback and will travel several miles to catch their target. These dogs...

 or harriers

Harrier (dog)

The Harrier is a small to medium sized dog breed of the hound class,used for hunting hares by trailing them. It resembles an English Foxhound but is smaller, though not as small as a Beagle.-Appearance:...

 in which the hounds are kept individually by hunt members and only assembled as a pack to hunt. Usually, a pack of hounds are maintained together as a pack in kennels.

In literature

In Virgil's Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

, trenchers are the object of a prophecy

Prophecy

Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...

. In bk.3, Aeneas

Aeneas

Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...

 recounts to Dido how after a battle between the Trojans and the Harpies, Calaeno, chief of the Furies, prophesied to him (claiming to have the knowledge from Apollo) that he would finally arrive in Italy, but

Never shall you build your promised city

Until the injury you did us by this slaughter

Has brought you to a hunger so cruel

That you gnaw your very tables.

The prophecy is fulfilled in bk.7, when the Trojans

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

 eat the trenchers after a frugal feast. Aeneas' son Ascanius

Ascanius

Ascanius is the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas and a legendary king of Alba Longa. He is a character of Roman mythology, and has a divine lineage, being the son of Aeneas, who is son of Venus and the hero Anchises, a relative of Priam; thus Ascanius has divine ascendents by both parents, being...

 jokes that they are so hungry they have eaten the tables, at which point Aeneas realises that the prophecy has been fulfilled. However, he reattributes the prophecy to his deceased father, Anchises:

I now can tell you, my father Anchises

Revealed these secrets to me for he said:

"When you have sailed, son, to an unknown shore

And, short of food, are driven to eat your tables,

Then, weary though you are, hope you are home

This episode is alluded to in Allen Tate

Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...

's poem, "The Mediterranean", although Tate calls them "plates".

See also

• Bread bowl
  Bread bowl
  A bread bowl is a round loaf of bread which has had a large portion of the middle cut out to create an edible bowl. Bread bowls can be used to serve chili, New England-style clam chowder, and other thick stews . Soups with thinner bases are not generally served in bread bowls, as the broth would...
  
  , modern version of Trencher
• Sop
  Sop
  A sop is a piece of bread or toast that is soaked in liquid food and then eaten. In medieval cuisine, sops were very common. Sops were served with wine, soup or broth, and then picked apart into smaller pieces to soak in the liquid. At elaborate feasts, bread was often pre-cut into finger-sized...
  
  
• Frumenty
  Frumenty
  Frumenty was a popular dish in Western European medieval cuisine. It was made primarily from boiled, cracked wheat - hence its name, which derives from the Latin word frumentum, "grain". Different recipes added milk, eggs or broth. Other recipes include almonds, currants, sugar, saffron and...
  
  
• Medieval cuisine
  Medieval cuisine
  Medieval cuisine includes the foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, a period roughly dating from the 5th to the 16th century...
  
  
• Great hall
  Great hall
  A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, nobleman's castle or a large manor house in the Middle Ages, and in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries. At that time the word great simply meant big, and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence...