If the term spooning, brings up thoughts of cuddling with someone like spoons in the silverware drawer, get over it and move on. One of my journalism students has created a blog about Hungarian cooking. After each post, she alerts me to the fact she has posted and asks that I proofread it. Her last post had the measurement “1 coffee spoon of…” I changed it to one teaspoon and informed her that those measurements in American English would be fractions of a teaspoon or a tablespoon, but that we don’t have coffee spoon measurements.
This led to a discussion of coffee spoons whereupon I stated that there are no ‘coffee spoons’ in the US. Hence she responded that she asked her Hungarian relatives who live in NJ and they said there were. Well, there you go then. Hungarian-Americans who live in NJ are the experts over a native. To be fair, I have not been to the US since 2003, so they could very well have created coffee spoons from the time when I was last there. When I Googled it, I found that there were coffee spoons, but they are not common. When I was a child my mother had a "good" set of silverware that lived in a wooden custom box lined with purple velvet and these pieces were only used for special occasions. There too, were utensils that one never saw in the daily silverware drawer.
The custom box should have had a glossary in the inner lid stating what some of these pieces were for and how to use them. Why someone needs four types of knives and four or more varieties of forks has always been beyond my comprehension. So it may be the same with the coffee spoon.
To be fair, I ran a survey on FaceBook asking how many Americans were aware of coffee spoons? If they were, would they use them for measuring? The meager results that have trickled in show I have an equally coffee spoon group of friends on FaceBook. No one had heard of them either. Some did refer to the fact that there are espresso spoons, but they are certainly not used for measurements and they are not called coffee spoons.
Now it is time for the rest of you to espresso yourself. What do you think?
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3 comments:
Never heard of a coffeespoon, a teaspoon however is a recognised measure and everyone has them (in the UK at Least). So I think teaspoon would be more aproriate to use on a cooking blog.
I've never heard of coffee spoons in the US, but I also grew up in a non coffee-drinking household. Then again, the little coffee spoons I use here in Hungary weren't strange for me, so perhaps I've unconsciously encountered them at home.
Coffeespoons as it happens are a often used in Hungary to measure, mainly in baking, PLEASE don't change them (some cakes could get very ruined) to teaspoons as they are only half of the size, if you must change it, to be more accessible then I'd suggest half a teaspoon as that is available in the UK and the US. :-)
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