Cheeseboards: Not Just a Board for cutting Cheese

So as I was pouring over Facebook tonight, I stumbled upon an interesting DIY video describing the construction of a cheese board.  Cheeseboards, for those who don't know, are simply boards upon which sliced cheese is served up, often with a wine accompaniment.  The types of cheeses and wines used in these glorified snack trays vary and the history of pairing wine with cheese goes back a respectably long way.  What immediately struck my curiosity was not these cheese and wine boards I've heard so much about, but instead the origin of the Cheeseboard itself.

Let's Start With... It Wasn't An Easy Search

It would probably have been easier if 'cheese board' wasn't a search term that gave you a million tips on how to pair cheese and wine and the history of the same.  Every variation of "History of the Cheeseboard" I could come up with resulted in the same result, articles on how to pair your wine and cheese, and in many cases how a charcuterie board could add to the flavor profile of the whole thing. 

(Hold your horses, we'll get to charcuterie boards soon enough.)

What I learned along the way is that there are as many ways to serve wine and cheese as there are countries, cultures, and families in the world.  Experts of every stripe have differing opinions on how to pair these august companions.  The journey was, if nothing else, educational. While I suspected there were near infinite variations of cheese in the world, I had no idea that they were classified under terms like "Winter Cheeses," defining those that were created from the previous summer's milk.

The lesson here? 

"Never underestimate the unnecessary levels of distinction food that has become 'trendy' and associated with the rich can obtain."

In all seriousness the information presented was fascinating, but outside the scope of this article.  Fear not, I intend to tackle that one later.  I've always been fascinated with cheese, probably as part of my blatant disregard for my health. I'm lactose intolerant.

So Where Does The Cheeseboard Come From? 

So the answer, as you might have come to expect, is both straight-forward and a bit ambiguous.  The origins of the cheeseboard, as referring to the item upon which you serve cheese, finds its roots in the trencher. 

"Great, that's fascinating!  What's a Trencher again?" I hear you ask.

See, I thought I knew the answer to this one myself, but it turns out I was wrong and right, you guessed it, it's going to be one of those kinds of articles.  A trencher, as far back as culinary history will tell us, was originally a round flat piece of stale bread that was used to serve food on.  Following the meal, this bread would either be eaten with a variety of sauces or handed out to the poor as alms.  Clearly, there have been some changes since then.

The change began when trenchers stopped referring to pieces of stale bread that were served as a plate with a meal and instead applied to the flat wooden plates that took their place. Except technically, they aren't plates.  As it turns out the definition of a plate requires that it has an upturned rim, a feature which your traditional wooden trencher lacked.

How far back did this tradition of using bread as a plate and then passing it to the poor go?  It was referenced in the Aeneid when Aeneas was given a prophecy by Celaeno of the Furies that he and his men would arrive in Italy, but while they were there, they would "eat their tables."  Guess what happened later in the Aeneid?  If you guessed they ended up having to eat their trenchers because they couldn't afford to pass up the stale bread?  You nailed it.

On the plus side he apparently discovered Pizza and the promised land in one fell swoop.

And Finally - The Cheeseboard In Modern Day

Trenchers continued to remain in use into the modern day, though most people who think they're eating off a trencher are likely mistaken. My evidence for this is first hand as I am active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a Medieval recreation organization and some of my earliest feast gear included a rectangular wooden plate with, you guessed it, an upturned rim.  Making it, by our current definition, a plate, not a trencher.

Today the most common form of trencher has taken its name from what it is used to serve.  You guessed it, that's the Cheeseboard.  A word so commonly used that Grammarly (which I'm using to edit this article) apparently recognizes as a word.  So there ya have it.  The wandering history of the Cheeseboard.

A very lovely, and particularly fancy, modern Cheeseboard.

No, we're not going to talk about how to prepare a cheeseboard today, that's a whole article unto itself.  I do, however, intend to come back to that one in a future article.