Note 55 — THE FIFTY COURTESIES FOR THE TABLE, OF FRA BONVESINO[13] DA RIVA.

Stecco. ‘Toothpick’ is the only appropriate technical sense for stecco given in the dictionaries; and I suppose it is correct here, although Della Casa’s very next sentence, denouncing the carrying of this implement round the neck, designates it by the word stuzzicadenti, and it seems odd that the two terms should be thus juxta-posed or opposed. If stecco does not in this passage really mean ‘toothpick,’ I should infer that it indicates some skewer-like object, used possibly as a fork—i.e. to secure the viands on the plate, while they are severed with a spoon, and by that conveyed to the mouth (see pp. 21 and 34 as to the use of spoon instead of fork in Bonvicino’s time). This would in fact be a sort of chop-stick. Such an inference is quite compatible with the general sense of the word stecco—any stake or splint of wood.