December 19, 2014 Advent with SusieJ

Silverware

Germans have a Victorian love for specialized flatware and dishes. Between my mother, my grandmother, various great aunts and aunts, coupled with an obsession to complete the sets, I too am capable of properly serving, if not Queen Victoria herself, then at least a moderately prosperous merchant family from a Dickens novel.

Part of this comes from treating 3 o'clock cake with coffee as a separate meal. Cake is eaten from a cake plate using a cake fork. It is always drunk with coffee, from a cup sitting on a saucer, stirred with a coffee spoon, and poured from a coffee pot. Cream or condensed milk (sold as "coffee milk") are added from a pitcher, and Americans might add sugar from the sugar pot (with sugar spoon). Now, if someone likes tea, they might drink that from a larger tea cup, and add brown lump sugar (used only in tea) with tongs. The tea is poured from a tea pot kept warm on a tea warmer. How the cake is presented and served depends on the type of cake: round cakes are on round cake servers, loaf and roll cakes on rectangular serving plates, with cake servers or cake tongs. The number of cakes served depends on the number of guests, the importance of the occasion, and whether the baker habitually freezes cake. My cousin serves one cake when we visit, my aunts two, and birthday parties can have five or more. Cake needs not only coffee, but often homemade whipped cream on the top. Your great aunt loves you when she puts a bowl of whipped cream (and its own spoon) on the table; she really loves you when she gives you your own bowl while she whips it in the kitchen. Some people prefer ice cream with there cake, or after cake, or for dessert; ice cream has its own specialized implements: the scoop, and special flat spoons. If no one is driving (because half the family still lives in the same neighborhood that your great-grandparents grew up and lived in), your cousin or aunt might pull out a bottle of champagne and glasses after the coffee is finished. There is a special champagne stopper to keep the bubbles in the bubbly.

That's just for cake and coffee.

Dinner has its own accessories. Example: you can still buy asparagus tongs in Germany, also, a special cooker and peeler. Germans are serious about asparagus. Goulash, Hasenpfeffer and other lovely meat in sauce dishes are served with a large ladle. Serving spoons for vegetables and potatoes are different shapes: round versus oval. (Germans are serious about potatoes too.) Sauce ladles. Meat forks. Olive tongs. Salad set. Mustard pots with matching salt and pepper shakers. Dinner differs from supper, so older flatware sets will have differently sized forks and knives, with smaller for supper or breakfast, and the larger for dinner (the main meal, usually served at noon).

As my mother's only child and her parents' only grandchild (throw in a few aunts who never had children, and lots of wedding presents), almost every piece of furniture downstairs stores a set of dishes, flatware or table linens.

Just a casual meal with the family and the good china. My grandmother's step-sister, Mathilda; grandmother's sister-in-law and Mathilde's close friend, Maria; my cousins, Nina and Jens; and Mom.