Pouncet-box

Carrying a pouncet-box was a common custom among the upper classes in the 16th and 17th centuries.

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held / A pouncet-box.

1866, Septimus Piesse, Pouncet Box and Pomander, entry in Notes and Queries: 3rd Series, Volume 9: January—June 1866, page 392, The pouncet box mentioned by Shakespeare in the Midsummer Night's Dream, I have always considered as a similar article to the pomander worn by "fashionable people" in the time of Elizabeth, containing powdered perfumery, such as musk, civet, and various spices.

1894 (1819), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Ginn & Company, page 364, " […] besides what is broken and spoiled among their rude hands, such as my pouncet-box and silver crisping-tongs."

1957, George Bernard Hughes, Small Antique Silverware, Bramhall House, page 186, More usually, however, the pouncet box hung from the waist by a black cord, until early in the seventeenth century. To Elizabethans the ceremonial of inhaling the piquant odour from the pouncet box was a social grace.