As ancient as the knife, the spoon was meant for liquid type of foods, both for eating and preparation purpose. The Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks used them with various shapes according to their use. The later ones even used a kind of egg spoon, with a pointed handle in order to punch a hole through the eggshell. Still in France, until the 16th century, when they were randomly used at princes’ tables, spoons were considered as a luxury kind of object. Montaigne said once: “I seldom use a spoon and a fork”.
The soups were then served in porringers you were raising to your mouth, and it even was an expression of good manners to wipe its rim prior to passing it over to a lady sitting at the dinner table next to you. It was to avoid staining the wide ruffs known as “fraises” in France, that were fashionable during the reign of French King Henry III, that the use of the spoon was then generalized.