What’s in a tablespoon?
English tablespoon and dessert spoon (nineteenth century). American tablespoons (twentieth century)
I’ve been talking with Carolina Capehart of Historic Cookery about the size of a tablespoon of flour in William Kitchiner’s Cook’s Oracle (1831 for 1817). Using six tablespoons of flour to three eggs and a pint of milk for a Yorkshire pudding recipe gave her too thin a batter.
I suggested that until I landed up in the United States, I had an English sense of tablespoons illustrated by the photo above.
On the left is what I grew up calling a tablespoon. If I had been told to add six tablespoons of flour I would have used this spoon (what Americans would call a serving spoon) and I would not have worried too much about leveling the flour.This would have given about twice the amount of flour that using an American tablespoon does.
In America a tablespoon (third from left) is about the size of what I used to call a dessert spoon (second from left). The measuring spoon (fourth from left) is the current official American size.
Now what would Kitchiner have meant? Surely that’s something that those who do a lot of historic cooking have sorted out. Can anyone enlighten me?
Our Canteen is late 19th copy of a standard 18th century set. In it there are dessert spoons, soup spoons, tablespoons, basting spoons, salt spoons, teaspoons and eggspoons.
Most people don’t have quite so many spoons, so the tablespoon = dessert spoon, which holds about 15 ml. One 19th reference says that an ordinary tablespoon holds 6 drachm (dram), which is 21-22 ml. Using the same spoon to measure a heaped spoonful of flour is likely to give you an even bigger increase, given the radius of you little wedge of flour and the inverse-square law and all that. Will also vary quite a bit based on the exact shape of the spoon and quality of the flour (sifted or not, how finely it is milled etc).
This is while measuring solids as a volume is stupid. 312,687,858 people can be wrong.
I can check the volume of the UK style tablespoon later if you like.
So the tablespoon is the one shown on the left in your image. They would have been a lot more useful prior to the take over of service à la russe I imagine.
I took my old “Larousse Gastronomique” (Prosper Montagné et al., 1938) for you. Under the chapter “Cuillerée” (spoonful), I find (my translation):
“… allthough there is no absolute rule, a coffee spoon generally contains 5 cc of water, thus 5 grams. A ‘dessert spoon’ (cuiller d’entremets) contains double and a ‘soup spoon’ (cuiller à soupe or cuiller à bouche) three times as much, 15 cc…
…a soup spoon contains 20 g of oil or syrup, , 25 g of flour, 30 g of caster sugar, 40 g of salt (well piled up), leveled it will contain half as much. These measures are very approximative but frequently used in those cooking books that are not too precise.”
This is my oldest certain source. Montagné was born in 1865, thus with his roots (and spoons) firmly in the 19th century. Maybe you should ask spponmaker Christoffle in Paris?
Hope to have been of some help…
Rachel
Writing recipes that work with American measures, English Imperial measures, and Continental metric measures can be quite a hairpulling experience. I like this image of what you have to deal with here.
Ruth :)
Being from Germany, but having lived in the US, I from time to time use American cookbooks and finding out what is how much, in the past led to an added entertainment value to my efforts in the kitchen.
These days I have the most important conversions in my head and also got a feeling for where a recipe’s author wants to get to, but for a long while it puzzled me how to determine how big or small a cup, table- or teaspoon has to be to get the envisioned amount right.
Call me an egocentric from the old continent, but the metric system does have its values :)
I agree with you about the metric syst. Or just using a scale instead of spoons and cups. Mind you any kind of exact measuring only works with standardized ingredients, hence it’s not much use prior to the industrialization of food.
So the 19th century Tablespoon I have holds 22 mls, were as the dessert spoon holds 12 ml.
I also found out the Australia has very different measures of volumes, so an Australian cup holds 250 mL, UK 284.1 mL and USA 236.59 mL. This may just explain my baking skills.
That’s roughly what I found when I measured, Adam.
Oh, and Adam, I think these big serving spoons were used in families where everyone served themselves. They certainly were in my family where there were never less than six at the table and usually eight or ten. And hungry people too.
These are all interesting comments. They prompt me to mention the following: when making my Yorkshire pud, I was using a British recipe, not an American one; said recipe was written in the early 19th century, long before measurements were standardized (and so no metric, either); I didn’t use a modern tablespoon (from a set of spoons designed specifically for measuring); I DID use my pewter reproduction of a late 18th-early 19th table spoon, or in other words, a spoon that was used at the table for eating (they were one and the same, because, again, there were no standardized measurements at that time); compared to a modern tablespoon-in-a-measuring-set, my repro IS larger; compared to one of my modern serving spoons, the repro is almost, but not quite, the exact same size.
The recipe certainly worked; it was just different from the other one I tried. I’d found several, and they all varied slightly in the ingredient amounts. Some day, I’ll have to try more of them and see how (and if) they’re any different.
Anyway…just thought I’d throw all that out there!
Thanks Carolina. I’ll look forward to more of your experiments.
Measurements may not have been stardardised at this period, but Kitchiner gives specific measurements at the begining of the volume.
“To reduce our Culinary Operations to as exact a certainty, as the nature of the processes would admit of; —we have, wherever it was needful, given the Quantities of each article.
The Weights, are Avoirdupois.
The Measure, — the graduated glass of the Apothecaries; this appeared the most accurate and convenient;—the Pint being divided into sixteen ounces, the Ounce into eight drachms. A middling size Teaspoon will contain about a Drachm;—four such Teaspoons are equal to a middling size Tablespoon, or half an Ounce;—four Tablespoons to a common sized Wineglass.”
So Kitchiner’s “middling size Tablespoon” is rather smaller then mine (four drachm (dram), rather then six). So close in volume to a modern standard Tablespoon measure.
Another consideration is that these historic recipes for puddings ‘fired under meat’, not baked in the oven like a modern Yorkshire pudding. This is a very different process to cooking in the oven. These recipes were relatively common in the north of England and Scotland in the 18th century (http://adambalic.typepad.com/the_art_and_mystery_of_fo/2011/08/the-evolution-of-the-yorkshire-pudding.html). In many recipes you pre-cook the pottom of the pudding over a fire, then place it underneath a roasting joint to finish cooking by radiant heat, while in other early recipes you start it off under the joint, then turn the pudding, partway through the cooking process to cook both sides. So oven cooking really doesn’t repliate the technique, which is just as important as the ingredients.
My goodness, I should have thought of looking in Kitchiner. Thanks for clearing this up Adam. And for the useful point about open hearth cookery. I saw that Ivan Day made the same remark on Carolina’s web site.
Quite a few of the 19th century texts gives these measures:
From the 1863 edition of Beeton:
“A TABLE-SPOONFUL is frequently mentioned in a recipe, in the prescriptions of medical men, and also in medical, chemical, and gastronomical works. By it is generally meant and understood a measure or bulk equal to that which would bo produced by half an ounce of water.
A DESSERTSPOONFUL is the half of a table-spoonful; that is to say, by it is meant a measure or bulk equal to a quarter of an ounce of water.
A Tea-spoonful is equal in quantity to a drachm of water.”
Reads like she pinched it of Kitchiner actually.
I’m sure Mrs Beeton cribbed it from someone and Kitchiner appears as likely as any. Also gives the lie to the American claim that standard volume measurements appeared at the end of the nineteenth century. It would be interesting to compare with Dutch, Scandinavian, German, French books.
Oh, if only I had a genuine cooking hearth! Then yes, these “experiments” would be more true. But, alas…. Hmmm, maybe I could enlarge my kitchen and build one over against that one wall…ah, it IS fun to dream!
Indeed yes, Carolina.