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Common Kitchen Table Setting Items That Used to Be Edible

Some common items we use to serve and eat our food used to also be consumed after meals

Andrew Martin
3 min readApr 18, 2021

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Mother is the necessity of invention and things have a tendency to evolve over time as people figure out new and better improvements. Such is the case with a couple of modern kitchen table setting items in the vast majority of homes across the globe that actually used to also be eaten once they had been used.

Dinner Plates:

Most kitchens have a variety of these vessels to serve meals. They can range from disposable paper and plastic to ornate and expensive china porcelain that are pulled out only during holidays and anniversaries.

Like many things, plates in some parts of the world used to be more rudimentary and functional. In parts of Europe, during medieval times, trenchers became popular. These were large round loaves of whole wheat bread that were allowed to age for several days before being cut into platter-sized rounds and used to scoop and serve food.

Although they were too coarse to generally be eaten by those who used them as dishes, they typically didn’t go to waste. After meals, they were given to dogs or beggars; the residual food and grease smeared on the bread adding extra…

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Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin

Written by Andrew Martin

Dabbler in soccer, history, investing & writing. Master’s degree in baseball history. Passionate about history, diversity, culture, sports, film and investing .

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