 During the Middle Ages in Europe, thick slabs of coarse and usually stale bread, called "trenchers," were used as plates.After a meal, the food-soaked trencher was fed to a dog or to beggars at the tables of the wealthy, and eaten by diners in more modest circumstances.The immediate culinary precursor with a direct connection to the English sandwich was to be found in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century, where the naturalist John Ray observed that in the taverns beef hung from the rafters "which they cut into thin slices and eat with bread and butter laying the slices upon the butter"—explanatory specifications that reveal the Dutch "belegde broodje", open-faced sandwich, was as yet unfamiliar in England.