Brandy bowl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The brandy bowl is a type of food vessel made of silver or pewter in the form of a handy bowl with two handles , which was particularly widespread in northern Germany and the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries .

use

The brandy bowl was used to offer and consume sweetened and spiced brandy , which was "thickened" with other ingredients and prepared as a brandy soup . Among the guests etc. the filled bowl was handed in turn, from which everyone spooned his share of the "brandy dish".

"Before the college went to the town hall, tasted 14 grotes for 2 pounds of raisins, 20 grotes for Rhenish brandy, sugar and nutmeg."

- Bremer Schütting account book , 1689.

What a committee of leading merchants afforded itself here for a rather insignificant occasion was reserved for special occasions in the middle and lower classes: weddings , maternal visits , child baptisms and funerals were opportunities in the 17th and 18th centuries to offer guests sweetened and spiced brandy. The ingredients changed: raisin brandy was in Ostfriesland and Bremen common elsewhere was honey cake of the fixed component of the gelöffelten food. In some cases syrup was also added. The preparation is also known in Lower Saxony under the name "cold bowl", but differs from the sweet soups described under the name cold bowl in today's cookbooks due to its alcohol content . Originally there was supposed to have been the custom of a communal spoon passed around with the bowl, later it was probably more common, according to the customs that were later still common in the country, for festival guests to bring their own spoons. Therefore there are no uniformly stylized bowl and spoon sets.

shape

Around 1700 it was still widespread to take drinks and pasty foods from a common bowl . This explains the peculiar shape of the bowls, which are particularly handy thanks to the two handles and suitable for passing on. An older type, developed in the Netherlands in the middle of the 17th century, was round, had a steep wall, horizontal handles and a foot ring. Later silver bowls are flatter, more oval, rest on three or four ball feet and have S-shaped, curved, vertically positioned handles. Pewter spirits bowls, in use in the country well into the 19th century, were round and retained the horizontal, flat handles throughout.

With the cover provided brandy shells are rare. They form the transition to the type of midwife bowl, a small terrine , which was used in the same period, the upper part of which was fitted with feet, and could be removed, turned and used as a plate.

When spooning spirits became out of fashion in middle-class families, but a suitable, representative vessel was still needed for baptisms , silver spirits bowls were often rededicated. This type of shape underwent such a thorough functional change that towards the end of the 18th century the traditional brandy bowl shape was adopted even for vessels expressly made as baptismal dishes. In 1894 the Bremen silverware factory Koch & Bergfeld offered a baptismal bowl of this type.

literature

  • Hans Wiswe: The brandy cold bowl . Studies on a food tradition. In: Contributions to German folklore and antiquity. No. 8, 1964. Hamburger Museumsverein, Hamburg, ISSN  0408-8220 , pp. 61-86.
  • Carl Hernmarck: The art of European gold and silversmiths , Munich 1978, p. 71ff.
  • Heinrich Fincke: "Kaltschale", "Brocksel" and other sweetened alcoholic traditional preparations, mostly with the addition of gingerbread or raisins. In: Süsswaren magazine , 6th year 1962, issue 20–22.
  • Heinrich Fincke: Brandy cold bowl in Lower Saxony . In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, 12th year 1965, pp. 151–172.

See also

Sinbohntjesopp

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hermann Kaiser: The great thirst. About beer distress and enemies of brandy - red Bordeaux and black coffee. Drink and beverages between Weser and Ems in the 18th and 19th centuries Century. Museumsdorf Cloppenburg , Cloppenburg 1995, ISBN 3-923675-55-0 , pp. 94-96. ( Materials & studies on everyday history and folk culture in Lower Saxony , issue 23)
  2. ↑ Ernst Dünzelmann : From Bremen's Zopfzeit. Still life in an imperial and Hanseatic city. G. A. von Halem, Bremen 1899, p. 21.
  3. ^ Wiard Lüpkes: Ostfriesische Volkskunde. Schwalbe, Emden 1907, p. 93.
  4. ↑ An example is contained in: Alfred Löhr: Bremer Silber. From the beginning to Art Nouveau. Handbook and catalog for the special exhibition from December 6, 1981 - April 18, 1982 in the Bremen State Museum ( Focke Museum ). Bremen State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Bremen 1981, p. 64. ( Booklets of the Focke Museum , No. 59)
  5. ^ Alfred Löhr: Bremen silver. From the beginning to Art Nouveau. Handbook and catalog for the special exhibition from December 6, 1981 - April 18, 1982 in the Bremen State Museum ( Focke Museum ). Bremen State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Bremen 1981, p. 71. ( Booklets of the Focke Museum , No. 59)