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An early form of sandwich is attributed to the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder, who is said to have wrapped meat from the Paschal lamb and bitter herbs in a matzo (or flat, unleavened bread) during Passover. During the Middle Ages, 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 unfortunate beggars, or eaten by the diner. Trenchers were as much the harbingers of open-face sandwiches as they were of disposable dishware. The immediate cultural precursor with a direct connection to the English sandwich was to be found in seventeenth-century Holland, 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 was as yet unfamiliar in England. The first written usage of the English word