Spoon warmers

Spoon warmer late Victorian — Spoon warmer c1890 designed by Christopher Dresser, just over 6 inches long. Made by Hukin & Heath, Birmingham. Photo by HomeThingsPast

Food served with a cold spoon may cool down too quickly for some tastes. Even worse, a dish with rich, fatty gravy may congeal unappealingly on its way to your plate. A decorative container filled with hot water to keep serving spoons and sauce ladles warm seemed like the perfect solution in Victorian England. The earliest spoon warmers date from the 1860s.

This makes more sense when we remember how cold British houses could be for much of the year. Until the later 20th century rooms were often poorly heated, even in wealthy homes. Households with servants urged their staff to hurry from kitchen to dining room so food could be served hot, or at least warm, on heated plates. (Keeping the plates hot was a big deal, but that’s another story.) Hot food was appetising and proof of a well-run home too. Spoon warmers played their part in the effort to serve food at the right temperature – and fitted in with all the other paraphernalia in a fashionable late 19th century dining room.

Shapes and materials

A silver nautilus shell, open end upward, was a popular shape for a spoon warmer. Antique shell types are not hard to find today. Presumably they’re appreciated as decorative items and not used much.

Silver and silver plate warmers were common, but spoon warmers were also made from majolica, bone china and other pottery, and sometimes from brass or copper. As well as the favourite shell style, often on a seashore-themed base, there were frogs and fish with open mouths, helmets, or hunting horns on their side.

Designs ranged from elegant pieces of silversmithing and ceramics to absurd novelties. You could buy a neatly lidded spoon warmer to match your Royal Worcester dinner service, or a boat-shaped warmer or bright blue toad made by Minton. The best warmers kept the hot water mostly covered, with an opening just big enough for convenience.

Some were designed to double up as something else, like this one which could also be an egg coddler.

Not everyone was whole-heartedly enthusiastic about spoon warmers and other fancy dining accessories:

His table was a torment by reason of its patented aids to enjoyment. What with his radial carver, iris spoon-warmer, and folding cruets; his self-acting gravy-helper, excelsior asparagus-tongs, and duplex plate-warmer; his royal potato-parer, imperial cucumber-slicer, and oriental digester, to say nothing of patent wine-lifts, corkscrews, oxygen-generators, appetite-stimulators, and the rest of it, dining became a burden, and dessert a weariness of spirit.
M.E. Braddon, A Victim of Patents, July 1869 Belgravia

They went out of fashion early in the 20th century. It wasn’t long before magazines were suggesting you could use them as “novel” flower holders.

Photos

The museum exhibiting this spoon warmer along with a claret jug, also by Dresser, labels them both as “electroplate” and ebony. The metal part of the jug has a silver surface, but the spoon warmer looks like copper. Original nautilus shell photo.
More picture info here

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Caddy spoons

Sterling silver caddy spoon — Solid silver caddy spoon with typical wide, round bowl and short handle. Elaborate decoration is not unusual. Made by Birmingham silversmith in reign of George IV, c1829. Photo by Clark Mills

If you have a nice tea caddy, you may also want a caddy spoon. In the early years of tea drinking in Europe and America, either the lid of the caddy was used for measuring out tea leaves, or a long-handled strainer spoon, but in the 1760s people started to use special silver spoons instead, with short handles so they would fit easily inside the caddy, on top of the tea leaves.

Silversmiths created a wide variety of spoons, and yet certain shapes were particularly popular: shells, especially, and a variety of leaf shapes. Shell-shaped spoons may have echoed the shells packed in tea consignments for merchants to sample the leaves. Fluted shells were a good way of strengthening thin silver spoon bowls along the lines of the fluting. Shovels and ladles are styles of spoon that may sound purely functional, but they too can be very decorative, with handles made of ivoory or mother-of-pearl, and highly collectible.

Spoons from the Georgian era, made by 1830, are very desirable now. A good silver spoon may well fetch several hundred dollars at auction, and a four figure price is not impossible. Silversmiths in Birmingham, England produced a high proportion of these early caddy spoons.

If you come across a pierced caddy spoon, it was probably intended to serve as a “mote spoon”. It could help pick out any mote or stray tea-leaf floating in the tea-cup, as well as being used in the ordinary way for measuring tea into the pot.

Caddy spoon in brass with Lincoln Imp handle - a design associated with Lincoln Cathedral. Photo by Terry Whalebone

Once tea was no longer a luxury, tea-drinking became widespread, more affordable caddies appeared, and caddy spoons became available cheaper versions. By the early 20th century, die-stamped alloy caddy spoons were a popular souvenir gift for people with modest incomes, and were on sale in every seaside town in Britain. They could be decorated with local motifs or scenes, enamelled crests, embossed placenames etc.

At the other end of the scale, one of the most valuable caddy spoons sold at auction in the last few years was designed by the 20th century craftsman Omar Ramsden. His 1931 art nouveau silver caddy spoon with semi-precious stones in a knotwork handle fetched over £2000.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here:
silver caddy spoon, imp caddy spoon. More picture info here

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Marrow scoops, spoons & table manners

marrow spoons or scoops from 1700s and 1800s — Silver marrow scoops from 1720s to 1850s (left to right). Photo by miladus

A silver marrow scoop is an elegant solution to a problem most of us don’t have today. How can you get the tasty marrow out of meat bones without abandoning your table manners?

Upper class diners adopted new rules of etiquette during the 1600s. Forks appeared on posh tables to help people eat with a less hands-on approach to cooked food. But forks didn’t help take the savoury jelly out of the marrowbones. You can get an idea of how this was done once upon a time by reading a mid-17th century etiquette book. The author thought it best for people to stop handling and “mouthing” bones altogether, but he would allow you to use one hand for meat bones as long as there was no gnawing, sucking, slurping etc. And definitely no banging, cracking, or biting. Get the marrow out neatly and decently – with a knife.

Suck no bones…Take them not with two hands…Gnaw them not…Knock no bones upon thy bread, or trencher, to get out the marrow of them, but get out the marrow with a knife…To speake better…it is not fit to handle bones, and much lesse to mouth them.
Make not use of a knife to breake bones…also breake them not with thy teeth, or other thing, but let them alone.
(Youths [sic] behaviour, trans. from French by Francis Hawkins, 1646)

marrowbone served with toast or bread — Cooked marrowbone served with bread. Photo by Sifu Renka

Before the end of the century marrow spoons had arrived, starting in the 1680s. These new implements for eating marrow had a rounded spoon at one end with a narrow scoop at the other. In 1710 one was described as “a marrow spoon with a scoop at the other end”.* Soon the spoon evolved into an elongated scoop, usually with a narrower version at the other end. Many more were made during the 18th century: an era when an impressive variety of new culinary paraphernalia was developed for the prosperous classes – from gravy warmers to caddy spoons.

I wish I could find a written description of someone taking marrow jelly out of a bone in the early days of the new scoops. Did no-one write about it at all? Later there are recipes for dainty dishes of prepared marrowbone that could be eaten quite easily; by this time the bones were being cut and served in a special way. Diners could still enjoy the traditional delicacy, but without handling the bones at all, not even excavating with a knife as a polite alternative to sucking. Probably the late 19th century marrow scoop in the last picture on this page was intended for this kind of dish. It doesn’t look suitable for fiddly excavation of bones cut from a big joint of meat, or from a whole animal roast on a spit.

Marrowbones from Mrs. Beeton's recipe

Ingredients.—Bones, a small piece of common paste [pastry], a floured cloth. Mode.— Have the bones neatly sawed into convenient sizes, and cover the ends with a small piece of common crust, made with flour and water. Over this tie a floured cloth, and place them upright in a saucepan of boiling water, taking care there is sufficient to cover the bones. Boil the bones for 2 hours, remove the cloth and paste, and serve them upright on a napkin with dry toast. Many persons clear the marrow from the bones after they are cooked, spread it over a slice of toast, and add a seasoning of pepper; when served in this manner, it must be very expeditiously sent to table, as it so soon gets cold. … Marrow-bones may be baked after preparing them as in the preceding recipe; they should be laid in a deep dish, and baked for 2 hours.
(Isabella Beeton’s recipe from 1861)

marrow scoop by spoon maker George Smith — Marrow scoop by George Smith - London 1780-1781. Photo by HomeThingsPast

The marrow scoop by George Smith III (picture left) comes from an important company of English spoon makers and silversmiths started by Thomas Chawner. They were active in London from the mid-18th to early 19th centuries.

marrow scoop late 19th C — Late Victorian marrow scoop - silver plate, mother of pearl handle. Photo by Leeds Museums and Galleries

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: 5 marrow spoons – n.b. dates and details on original photo, cooked marrowbone, Gge Smith scoop by HomeThingsPast, Victorian marrow scoop. More picture info here

Notes

* From The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaffe in Joseph Steele’s Tatler: “a marrow spoon with a scoop at the other end”.