Lancashire Spreads

Spread toasts were a popular Elizabethan dish. The spread was originally served directly on to trenchers, which were made of rather coarse bread and were sometimes eaten and sometimes treated only as plates. In great houses, fine white manchet bread was toasted for the spread and the whole placed on a trencher or a platter.

The earliest spreads were made of chopped veal kidney or sweetbreads mixed with egg yolks, spices, sugar and rosewater. Towards the end of the seventeenth centur