voidee

Etymology

From Old French [Term?].

noun

1. (now only historical) A cup of wine drunk with spices or other small accompaniments, taken before retiring to bed or before the departure of guests; also, a larger snack or small meal taken in similar circumstances.
   Ther nys no more, but here-after soone, / The voide dronke, and trauers drawe anon, / Gan euery wight that hadde nought to done / More in the place out of the chaumbre gon …. c. 1385, Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, Book III
   Within an owre the Kyng askid the voidee, and drank, the travers yn the chambure edraw, and every man depairtid and went to rist. 1400, JN. Shirley, Dethe of James Stewarde, Kyng of Scotys, page 13, ed. 1818
   Before the voidee, came in five score couple, Earles, Barons, and Knights, over and besides Squiers, having collers and chains of gould, every each of them throughout, bearing the one of them a spice-plate, the other a cuppe, beside yeomen of the guard that followed them with potts of wine to fill the cuppes. The spice-plates were furnished in the most goodly manner with spices, after the manner of a voidee; and the cuppes were replenished with wine, and universally throughout the said hall distributed. a. 1826, notes to Ann Ward Radcliffe’s Gaston de Blondeville, in The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Radcliffe, Volume III, Henry Colburn (publisher, 1826), page 83