Roast Beef and Trenchers

A trencher was a wooden platter for serving meat. Sometimes they were made of bread, and then they were eaten up, with all the soaked-in juices and gravy, at the end of the meal. Hence a trencherman was the servant who turned the meat and kept the trenches warm – or else he was a hearty eater who guzzled up all the plates after everyone else had left! That’s the end of the history lesson.