posted 11-23-2005 06:18 PM            

It's just over a foot long, with a deep, 2-inch-wide bowl.

Fully marked for Edinburgh, 1767/8, and made by the prominent silversmith of that city William Davie, who worked c.1740-1791.

This is the distinctive Onslow pattern, with its scrolled handle. I believe it is usual for the scroll to be cast and soldered onto the handle, as in this case. You can see one end of the lap joint just below the monogram here; the lap in this case is over 1 inch long.

(A lap joint is made by preparing matching surfaces on the two pieces to be joined, made so they form a diagonal join-line through the section; the ends of the soldered seam thus show in two offset places on the opposite sides of the piece. This is much stronger than a simple butt joint, where the two pieces are simply cut flat and soldered together.)

Thanksgiving as celebrated today in the US only dates to around the time of the American Civil War, and was originally promoted to help boost the significance of the Plymouth colony over the earlier southern colony of Virginia, with its earlier historic Thanksgiving feast -- as well as over the Native American traditions of harvest thanksgivings. An excellent book by Ann Uhry Abrams, The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origin, examines the ways 19th-century scholars and others, particularly northern historians, worked to diminish the significance of the southern colony in the founding legends of the nation in favor of the Pilgrims (and at the same time diminishing Pocahontas as a sort of national matriarch in favor of the Pilgrim fathers).

posted 11-23-2005 06:54 PM            

Having eaten that famous dish (which actually is not bad) and with all do respect to the Scots, I wonder if anyone who could afford silver would choose to eat haggis! They served a small portion of the it at a "Fellowship of Good Cheer" dinner I attended at the Canadian Military Base at Clementsport, NS (now the Pearson Peacekeeping Center). Our host assured us that this was not real haggis, which the Canadian Ministry of Health would not have allowed! To paraphrase Bismark, "Anyone who wants maintain his/her respect for law and sausage [and haggis] should not watch them being made."

Good Cheer and Happy Thanksgiving to all,

Tom

posted 12-12-2005 07:15 PM            

Rice was domesticated pretty early in Asia, and may have entered Europe with Alexander the Great. Certainly it was in the Mediterranean by the Middle Ages, brought in by Arab traders, and it was grown in Spain by the 8th century. But while it became a staple of the Mediterranean diet, it was only grown as a curiosity in England, and so far as I've been able to find was not widely consumed there until Asian restaurants rose in popularity in the late 20th century. Even now, at least in my limited experience, it is not as commonly eaten in England, outside of Asian dishes, as it is in many parts of the world.

Your spoon is English, and early 18th century in style, although made most likely in the mid-20th century. If one takes the style as 'original' date, rice is pretty much out of the question; even with the more recent date it would be unlikely. Simply, stuffing is a more common preparation in traditional English cuisine than is rice.

Note also that most people feel the best implement for rice is more paddle-shaped, and wooden or bamboo (having to do partly with the Asian styles with which it is generally associated, partly with the sticky quality of cooked rice, and maybe with some other factors as well (like a desire to not cut the rice grains with a sharp metal edge but separate them with a blunter, wooden implement)). An oval bowl like this, however, is better for reaching into a stuffed fowl. (Or into a stomach, in the case of haggis, to get back to the origins of this thread)

Finally, to wrap up the story of rice, note that it was introduced into US cuisine much earlier than in England. It was being grown in South Carolina by the late 17th century, and that was the only place in the world at the time that rice was a regular food for a white English-speaking population. More generally it was a slave food in the southeast (being a regular part of many African cuisines), and was probably also used in beer-making. But even in the US its widespread use as a regular side-dish is pretty recent, and in "mainstream" US cuisine is probably still more commonly found in ethnic dishes than as plain rice -- especially outside the southeast.

I've had to pull this together from memory of various sources, supplemented with The Cambridge World History of Food, as I don't know of any single clear source on the global history of rice use. It's a long and fascinating tale, worth exploring.

posted 12-13-2005 01:15 AM            

I enjoyed your soujourn into rice. I have always had a vague notion that rice was important in the South for some reason. Maybe it was because of the slaves.

I always thought sheep were pretty interesting. Domesticated sheep go way, way back. But, now I digress.

Stuffing turkeys is certainly an American thing to do; Pilgrims and Indians and all that. I have used it to dig out the stuffing.

It is a very handy spoon. It's a good shape, bowl size and length for lots of odd ball things. I think it's from the 1950's, but maybe I'll research that next.

Yippy. Something else to check out.

PS We have an awful lot of rice pudding here. Much of it is Mexican rice pudding and it's quite tasty.