What do you use to eat soup?

[Stilton1]

Just wondering...

I've grown up with a full(-ish) set of cutlery - table knives, table forks, dessert spoons, soup spoons, dessert knives, dessert forks, teaspoons. And I use them all, because they've always been there.

Many sets of cutlery only contain table knives, table forks, dessert spoons and teaspoons, so I'm assuming this is now the norm and I'm just a bit behind the times. I think that perhaps round soup spoons are a British thing and not used in other European countries?

May I please ask, which items of cutlery do you have in your home? Of those, which do you use? And, finally, what do you use to eat soup when you have company?

Soup spoon, but I'm the wrong person to ask, I also have, teaspoons, dessert spoons, table spoons, cake forks, salad forks, fish knives and a set of cheese knives. I've found DH hovering over the cutlery drawer more than once looking sightly perplexed

I thought soup spoons were considered a bit naff these days, like fish knives and black forest gateaux

What! Black Forest gateaux is naff!

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

A table spoon is a large spoon used to serve food. (15ml) A dessert spoon is the 'eating spoon' .(10ml) A tea spoon is for stirring (and eating small things). (5ml) Soup spoons are rounded.

Aren't the large ones used for serving called serving spoons? The ones I have are bigger than 15mls.

Then I have 15ml tablespoons that we eat with. And 5ml teaspoons.

I don't even know what dessert spoons are! Are they those long, fairly shallow, pointyish ones that come with the regular, bog standard cutlery set? If so, then we use them. We don't have those big, deep, round ones that I'm assuming are soup spoons.

We eat cake with table forks and, if they're covered in cream, a teaspoon to get at the last bits that you can't reach with a fork.

I remember soup eating etiquette being a really big deal when I was little, even if it was Heinz tinned. Apparently everyone would think you were very common if you scoop it into the spoon toward yourself, dunk your bread or tilt your bowl in the wrong direction to help get the last remains at the bottom. I still get "the look" if we have soup at my parents house and I eat it commonly. It all seems a bit Downtown Abbey now and with kids with food issues I virtually throw a party if they eat, however it gets from the bowl to their mouth!

Wow, the number of responses... and, as always, so varied. Thank you all. Very informative. Clearly most people aren't too bothered and it's mainly down to what your parents did! Incidentally, apparently in Australia they use soup spoons - maybe a Commonwealth thing?

Always a soup spoon.

Growing up we just had ‘big spoons’ used for soup, dessert, cereal and anything else.

My everyday canteen of cutlery (Stellar, have it 15 years) has soup and dessert spoons.

Surely anyone who cooks or learnt cookery at school knows that a tablespoon is not used for eating - it’s a measuring or serving spoon. Bigger than a dessert or soup spoon.

Soup spoons of course. I got the 100 piece canteen of cutlery in an oak box as an engagement present. Use it everyday.

Well today I learnt that the spoon in bog standard cutlery sets is a dessert spoon.
Which is what I have always used perfectly fine without spilling soup everywhere.

I've always used a soup spoon. So has my family and everyone I know. Until now I've never heard of anyone using a dessert spoon for soup! How strange, it this a new thing?? I'm British, but on the elderly side!!

Based on the shape of my mouth, I’m very fussy about the shape of my spoons. A large full round spoon cuts the corners of my lips.

A tablespoon. Soup spoons confuse my brain tbh.

Usually a dessert spoon, we have got some soup spoons though, always out of a Le Creuset soup bowl though.

Wtf is a soup spoon?

I know of dessert spoons, teaspoons, table spoons, butter knives, steak knives, fish knives. That's it i'm afraid.

I love the "not too expensive" cutlery at 195. That is way out of my price vracket for cutlery (I wish it wasn't, it looks lovely!) Which perhaps goes a little way to explain why we don't have soup spoons!

Soup spoon, of course.

Soup spoon. I’ve even taken a spare one into work so that when I have soup for lunch there I can use a proper spoon. Not posh, early 50s.

Isn’t a tablespoon too big for soup?

Is it a round one? Think I may have a vague memory of my nan owning such a spoon?

I use a soup spoon. My cutlery set is a very ordinary one, nothing special, but it does contain a set of soup spoons as well as dessert spoons.

@WorraLiberty

I've just got the bog standard table knives, table forks, dessert spoons and teaspoons.

Having company doesn't make me eat soup differently.

Same, except I didn't even know they were anything but spoons. Must be our convict heritage . I was wondering what this question could possibly be about. Live and learn and all that.