Spoon in the context of "Crockery"

Tableware items are the dishware and utensils used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. The term includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, serving utensils, and other items used for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates, and not infrequently without use of cutlery. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware.

Cutlery is more usually known as silverware or flatware in the United States, where cutlery usually means knives and related cutting instruments; elsewhere cutlery includes all the forks, spoons and other silverware items. Outside the US, flatware is a term for "open-shaped" dishware items such as plates, dishes and bowls (as opposed to "closed" shapes like jugs and vases). Dinnerware is another term used to refer to tableware, and crockery refers to ceramic tableware, today often porcelain or bone china. Sets of dishes are referred to as a table service, dinner service or service set. Table settings or place settings are the dishes, cutlery and glassware used for formal and informal dining. In Ireland, tableware is often referred to as delph, the word being an English language phonetic spelling of the word Delft, the town from which so much delftware came. Silver service or butler service are methods for a butler or waiter to serve a meal.

Cutlery are utensils used for serving and eating food at the dining table — originally referring to just knives, whereas forks and spoons were silverware — all part of flatware (American English) or tableware, these both encompassing crockery as well. These three implements first appeared together on tables as a set in Britain in the Georgian era. A collected set of silverware is called a canteen of cutlery, typically referring to the polished wooden compartmental case in which they are stored.

The city of Sheffield in Yorkshire, England has been famous for the production of cutlery since the 17th century. An express passenger train – the Master Cutler – running from Sheffield to London was named after the industry. The development of cheap and mass-produced stainless steel in Sheffield in the early 20th century brought affordable cutlery to the masses.

A skimmer is a flat, sieve-like scoop or spoon used for skimming cooking liquids or lifting ripened cream from milk, such as a spider used in Chinese cuisine.

Skimmers are widely used in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In India, the skimmer is known as a "jhara" and is used in different cuisines, most actively in the making of fried foods such as sweets. Local street food stalls use it to make fried food items like bondas and medu vadas. In these countries, different types of skimmers can be obtained based on their use cases.

A slotted spoon is a spoon implement used in food preparation. The term can be used to describe any spoon with slots, holes or other openings in the bowl of the spoon which let liquid pass through while preserving the larger solids on top. It is similar in function to a sieve; however, a ladle-sized slotted spoon is most typically used to retrieve items from a cooking liquid while preserving the liquid in the pot, while table-sized slotted spoons are often used to serve foods prepared or packaged in juices, such as canned fruit and vegetables.

One peculiar example of a slotted spoon is used in the traditional absinthe preparation ritual. A special absinthe spoon with a disproportionately weighted, often ornately decorated, and the mostly flat bowl is balanced upon the rim of a glass, on which is placed a sugar cube and through which ice water is poured or dripped into the drink. The slots in the spoon ensure that only fully dissolved sugar reaches the beverage, and the slow trickle of water accentuates the appearance of the louche.

A measuring spoon is a spoon used to measure an amount of an ingredient, either liquid or dry, when cooking. Measuring spoons may be made of plastic, metal, and other materials. They are available in many sizes, including the teaspoon and tablespoon.

A variety of eating utensils have been used by people to aid eating when dining. Most societies traditionally use bowls or dishes to contain food to be eaten, but while some use their hands to deliver this food to their mouths, others have developed specific tools for the purpose. In Western cultures, cutlery items such as knives and forks are the traditional norm, while in much of the East, chopsticks are more common. Spoons are ubiquitous.

Chopsticks are shaped pairs of equal-length sticks that have been used as kitchen and eating utensils in most countries of the Sinosphere for over three millennia. They are held in the dominant hand, secured by fingers, and wielded as extensions of the hand, to pick up food.

Originating in China, chopsticks later spread to other parts of the Sinosphere such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Chopsticks have become more accepted in connection with East Asian food in the West, especially in cities with significant East Asian diaspora communities. The use of chopsticks has also spread to the Southeast Asia either via the Chinese diaspora or through some dishes such as noodles that may require chopsticks.