Table spoons: description, volume and types

The first mention of the spoon as a subject for meals was found in ancient manuscripts more than three thousand years old. In Europe, this well-known device for a table meal was brought from a trip to England by Prince Vladimir Vsevolodovich Monomakh in 998 AD. In order to raise the culture to the European level, peasants and commoners in Russia were ordered to eat the main dishes and cutlets, porridge, meat and other food not with their hands, but only with the help of cutlery (spoons, knife or fork).

Each of us picks up a tablespoon, sitting at a table, at least 3 times a day, without thinking about the origin of this ancient "tool of labor for eating food at the table". This familiar kitchen accessory for the last thousand years has firmly entered our consciousnessTherefore, many people, while compiling a list of basic necessities for a multi-day hiking trip, are primarily referred to as a tablespoon.

The absence of a tableware tool in the pocket of a backpack, which was discovered upon arrival at the cottage, in a tent on the banks of a river or lake, on a halt in the woods or on a yacht in the open sea, evokes Robinson Crusoe on an uninhabited island. This creates a strong psychological discomfort because of the real prospect of eating fishing fish soup, porridge with meat or pea soup from a camping pot with a cup, mug, glass found in the bushes of a rusty tin can and other improvised means.

Historians, linguists and archaeologists give the following scientific description of this simple fixture for a table meal: “A spoon is a cutlery that looks outwardly like a small flat elongated cup (scoop) with a handle or handle attached to it”.

In the explanatory dictionary of V.I. Dahl, a tablespoon is described as “an instrument for baking, for eating liquids”.

It is a little more difficult to accurately measure a small amount (up to 50 grams) of bulk or liquid products. Depending on the consistency of the ingredients that are included in the recipe, to measure a small amount of bulk or solid foods and liquids (oil, vinegar, syrup, brine) according to the recipe, home cooks use the following available tools for weight and volume for different types of products:

1. solid products (butter, margarine, lard) - by weighing the piece cut by the knife on the scales;
2. bulk products (salt, sugar or other substances) - a pinch (the amount of a substance between three tightly squeezed fingers of the right hand), a glass, weighing, dining, dessert or teaspoon;
3. liquid products (syrup, brine) - a faceted glass, a liter jar, a tablespoon or a teaspoon, the number of drops.

Professional cooks use table, dessert and teaspoons when cooking according to the recipe, as a reference standard for measuring the amount of bulk and liquid foods, along with a pinch, a glass and electronic scales.

Housewives, professional chefs and cooks, who regularly cook with their own hands and preserve mushrooms, fruits, vegetables according to recipes for the winter, are well aware of a tablespoon, as an improvised kitchen device for measuring the weight of individual bulk or liquid ingredients (salt, granulated sugar, table vinegar). , sunflower or olive oil, spices and many others) according to the recipe.

In European countries, three types of spoons are used for meals. Along with the largest in terms of dining room capacity, dessert and teaspoons are used during the feast. They are also intended for eating dessert, mousse, jelly, broth, meat and liquid dishes.

In addition to the usual tablespoon made of stainless steel or the alloy of the International Scientific Center (nickel silver, nickel, zinc), familiar to everyone from childhood, with which all people daily eat liquid and solid food while sitting at the table, for the long history of mankind, quite a few varieties of this ancient instrument for other auxiliary purposes were invented and manufactured:

1. dining room - for the first and second hot dishes;
2. soup - made of stainless steel grade 18/10, has a rounded deep scoop and a handle 18 centimeters long to protect fingers from burns when eating hot soup;
3. tea - with a removable strainer for brewing tea;
4. musical - to extract sounds from ancient string instruments;
5. portion - for packaging of ice cream in wafer cups;
6. bar - with a long handle for making a cocktail;
7. coffee - for the dosage of ground natural coffee;
8. decorative - varnished with a pattern or ornament;
9. for spreading red and black caviar on a sandwich;
10. silver from silverware;
11. gilded, covered with a thin layer of gold leaf;
12. for the preparation of pickled and salted olives for a side dish or a cocktail;
13. for eating boiled hard boiled and soft-boiled chicken eggs;
14. dimensional - for the dosage of ingredients in cooking recipes;
15. figured - in the form of a spatula with rare figured teeth for cutting and serving cake, mousse and pudding to the table;
16. for the preparation of alcoholic cocktails like absinthe;
17. souvenir, lacquered, patterned or ornamented (not used for meals).

The most famous varieties of the ancient "tools", which was invented by man in the process of evolution, are considered to be several major groups of products.

Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, a well-known revolutionary and utopian philosopher, when he saw the aluminum spoon for the first time, said a prophetic phrase that this metal is destined for a great future.

Stalin’s excesses and repressions filled the prisons with innocent people who, in deep mines, standing up to the waist in cold water, mined aluminum ore (bauxite) with a pickaxe and shovel. Low-cost electrolytic aluminum was smelted out of bauxite from electrolysis furnaces, from which lightweight machine parts were made, as well as spoons, forks and dishes for themselves and for millions of Soviet citizens, the vast majority of whom were fed in cheap Soviet canteens. According to statistics, during 1937 about 10 million aluminum spoons and the same amount of aluminum forks were produced.

The revolutionary technology of oxygen-converter steel smelting from iron ore has greatly reduced the cost of steel products. Aluminum forks with curved and twisted teeth in the 70s of the last century in the Soviet canteens replaced steel cutlery labeled "stainless" on the handle.

For resistance to corrosion and mechanical stress (representatives of the worker-peasant intelligentsia, sitting in the dining room, opened the handles of spoons and forks from stainless steel lids on half-liter glass bottles with lemonade and beer) in a batch of steel from which spoons and forks were made, a small the amount of nickel silver, nickel and zinc. On the long handle of spoons, knives and forks of "improved" steel could be considered an oblong stamp with small letters "ISTC".

In a form and the sizes copies a steel spoon. Made of heat-resistant plastic with bactericidal components added to plastic. It can not be used for hot foods and beverages (tea, coffee, borscht, soup, ear, kharcho, aza). Used in restaurants, cafes, bistros and other fast-food outlets as disposable dishes.

A reusable spoon made of steel or heat-resistant plastic is used every day at home. By hygiene standards, this tool for food should have a number of properties:

1. do not react with organic acids;
2. have high mechanical bending strength;
3. maintain the temperature of boiling fat, tea or coffee and dishwasher processing;
4. resistance to organic acid, alkali, synthetic detergents;
5. no release of harmful substances (phenol, toluene, benzene) when in contact with food.

It has a simple primitive design, made of thin thermoplastic. The low price does not include sanitization in the dishwasher and reuse. One-time spoon can not be used for hot coffee or tea.

The capacity of a tablespoon (unlike a glass) is determined by the country where it is produced. A European-style tablespoon (20 grams) contains up to 18 ml (milliliters) of liquid (the amount of liquid in a spoon depends on density), 30 grams of fine kitchen salt, 25 grams of granulated sugar, about 12 grams of dried baker's yeast.

The required proportions of products and their quantity in each recipe are indicated in grams or in the number of tablespoons. It is more convenient for a home cook to use as a measure a 100 gram glass or a tablespoon, because a tablespoon and a glass are almost always at hand, unlike precise electronic scales with a small measurement range.

Based on the situation, many "home cooks" use the table of weight of bulk products in 1 tablespoon and measure the required number of tablespoons with or without top. An extract from the table for the main types of products is given below. The numerator indicates the weight of the product in the scales in one tablespoon without top, in the denominator with the top.

A lot of food in one tablespoon:

1. wheat flour of the highest grade - 20/30 g;
2. granulated sugar of the first or highest grade - 20/25 g;
3. powdered sugar - 22/28 g;
4. salt "Extra" (fine) - 22/28 g;
5. rock salt - 25/30 g;
6. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) - 22/28 g;
7. polished rice - 15/18 g;
8. ground coffee - 15/20 g;
9. liquid honey - 25/30 g;
10. granulated gelatin - 10/15 g;
11. dry baker's yeast - 8/11 g;
12. cocoa powder - 20/25 g;
13. ground cinnamon - 15/20 g;
14. citric acid (crystalline) - 12/16 g;
15. spring water - 18 g;
16. vinegar 9% - 16 g;
17. whole milk - 18 g;
18. vegetable oil - 16 g;
19. Margarine baked - 15 g.

Modern tablespoons for eating are smelted from the MNC alloy (nickel silver is a copper-nickel-zinc alloy). The thickness of the silver deposition of products from the ISC is 24 microns. Alloy composition:

1. Ni (nickel) - 15%;
2. Zn (zinc) - 20%;
3. Cu (copper) - up to 100%.

From the other types (tea, dessert, large and small), a tablespoon of classic form is different in size and capacity. An empirical (empirical) method was used to derive a relationship between the capacity of a tea, dining, and dessert spoon made from an MNC alloy for clean tap water:

1. 200 ml thin-walled glass - 16 tablespoons (12.5 ml of water in 1 tablespoon);
2. glass thin-walled 200 ml - 20 dessert spoons (in 1 dessert spoon 10 ml of water);
3. thin-walled 200 ml glass - 40 teaspoons (in 1 teaspoon 5 ml of water).

The capacity of a tablespoon of aluminum with a length of 192 mm is 10 ml of water (25% less than steel), the dead weight of the spoon is 32 grams.

According to sanitary standards, silver 875 ° samples and its alloys (nickel silver) can be used for the manufacture of wearable jewelry and products for storing food products without coating of zinc, nickel or gold amalgam. Cutlery from silver 925 ° samples (technical silver) is necessarily covered with a thin layer of gold, chromium, nickel or zinc to prevent oxidation in air and the formation of water-soluble compounds as a result of a chemical reaction with an acid that is contained in food.

To prevent darkening (oxidation) of the surface of spoons, knives and forks made of table silver or nickel silver The following simple rules should be followed:

1. tableware and tableware made of silverware or MNTs should be stored in tightly closed drawers with velvet upholstery to protect silver from tarnishing;
2. put a package of silica gel in each box with cutlery to absorb moisture, or wrap items in aluminum foil;
3. tarnished products should be spread with a thin layer of toothpaste or a mixture of tooth powder with alcohol and polished with a soft wool or flannel rag;
4. when removing darkened places, pumice, emery cloth or abrasive paste cannot be used - this can break the thinnest external coating and result in ingestion of large amounts of silver salts in food;
5. completely darkened object can be cleaned of surface oxidation with a mixture of tooth powder and salt with the addition of ammonia;
6. To maintain the gloss of the spoon, forks and knives made of silverware, you should regularly wipe them with a soft wool or flannel cloth, and after using cutlery, you should wash them of food residue and wipe them with a soft cloth.

Also noteworthy is the old method of cleaning products made of silver and its alloys with the help of tooth powder and wool or flannel napkins. A small amount of dry tooth powder is poured onto the napkin and silver tableware is wiped gently without pressure. After restoring the lost luster, the cutlery is washed with tap water and wiped dry with a napkin.

How to clean silver cutlery, see the following video.