Among the 13th century table manners, one book tells diners not to pick
their teeth with their knives, and to "refrain from falling upon the
dish like a swine while eating, snorting disgustingly and smacking the
lips."
--Lance Gay, Scripps Howard News Service
Gay points out, however, that the medievals could practice their good manners on many more interesting foods than we have at table today, including "starlings, vultures, gulls, herons, cormorants,
swans, cranes, peacocks . . . , dogfish, porpoises, seals,
whale, . . . hedgehogs, . . . [and] lamprey eels.".