FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
CADENAS
Excerpted from Montagne, Prosper. 1961. Larousee Gastronomique. The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine & Cookery. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York.
is a kind of container, with grooves, which closed like a drawer. This was used in the Royal households for the same purpose as the Nef, a basket containing Royal cutlery, napkins, etc. It contained the fork, the knife and the spoon, the bread being placed on the dishy. The cadenas were still in use in the sixteenth century. Under Louis XIV it became a hexagonal tray on which the napkin, the fork, the knife and the spoon were placed. The Grand Pantler had the nef and the cadenas conjoined on his coat-of-arms- as insignia of his office.
