FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
SERVIETTE, TABLE NAPKIN
Barer-Stein, Thelma. 199. Chapter 1. African. You eat What You Are People, Culture and Food Traditions. Firefly Books, pp. 19-21.
is a piece of linen to protect the clothing and to wipe mouth and fingers at the table.
Its use is much less ancient that that of tablecloth or towel. Up to the fifteenth century one wiped one's fingers on the tablecloth or on the doublier, a second cloth, covered in its turn with a longiere, yet a third, intended for this use; later came napkins or touailles, but they were few and generally attached to the walls. It was only in the sixteenth century that the use of the individual table napkin became general. At first it was kept over the left arm, then the fashion for starched ruffs made it necessary for them to be tied round the diners' necks.
At court, the king's napkin, wrapped up and placed in the ,nef (the golden vessel which contained his person cruet and cutlery) was presented to him after his food had been teested, by the personage of the highest rank among those present, a prince of the blood royal or a high dignitary.
The Master of the Royal Household carried a rolled-up napkin over his left shoulder as an insignia of office.
Excerpted from Montagne, Prosper. 1961. Larousee Gastronomique. The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine & Cookery. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York.
is a piece of linen to protect the clothing and to wipe mouth and fingers at the table.
Its use is much less ancient that that of tablecloth or towel. Up to the fifteenth century one wiped one's fingers on the tablecloth or on the doublier, a second cloth, covered in its turn with a longiere, yet a third, intended for this use; later came napkins or touailles, but they were few and generally attached to the walls. It was only in the sixteenth century that the use of the individual table napkin became general. At first it was kept over the left arm, then the fashion for starched ruffs made it necessary for them to be tied round the diners' necks.
At court, the king's napkin, wrapped up and placed in the ,nef (the golden vessel which contained his person cruet and cutlery) was presented to him after his food had been teested, by the personage of the highest rank among those present, a prince of the blood royal or a high dignitary.
The Master of the Royal Household carried a rolled-up napkin over his left shoulder as an insignia of office.
