Wafer

During the late medieval period and into the early renaissance, wafers were an important constituent of the void, or issue de table , the court ceremony at the end of a state meal. Wafers, comfits and hippocras were consumed by the sovereign in this semi-religious ritual linked with the final grace and the washing of hands. The hippocras and wafers may originally have had a quasi-eucharistic significance in that they echoed the Holy Communion. The spicy comfits were intended as ‘stomach settlers’ to calm the royal digestion, though like both hippocras and wafers they later became luxurious treats consumed at all manner of celebratory occasions by those who could afford them.