Don't Forget the Bar Spoon

The barspoon is a common bar utensil usually used to stir cocktails. Next to stirring, this tool doubles down as a measure, a muddler and sometimes even as a weapon used to defend yourself against angry, drunk guests 😉 Don’t actually do the last part!

The history of the bar spoon

The barspoon has a long history with many question marks. No one seems to know for sure where its true origin lies. One thing we know for sure, it’s one of mankind’s oldest eating utensil. The spoon finds its origin in paleolithic times according to cocktail historian Jared Brown. It may well be that man was using shells and other objects to eat certain types of food. There’s also records, and evidence of spoons found in Egyptian tombs.

Spoons were “invented” or brought back to many countries, so finding its specific origin is a difficult task on its own. But it’s during the middle ages in Europe, where the manufacturing and using of spoons took off. One type of spoon that was used during this era was the sucket spoon. A spoon that has a fork on the opposite end. The sucket spoon was a multipurpose utensil that was sometimes used to scoop out fruit from a, back then, famous British dessert called the wet sucket. A dessert containing various cooked fruits soaked in a syrup of some sort.

The sucket spoon eventually made its way into American bars during the early 1800’s cocktail revolution, where it was used behind the bar in cocktails and mixed drinks with fruits. One could say that this would have been the start of bar spoons starting to evolve behind the bar.

Another type of spoon could be traced back to France, where apothecaries would measure dry ingredients in the bowl of the spoon. The opposite end of the spoon had a small muddler. It was used to powder down more solid medicine. This spoon also made its way towards the bar, where it was indeed used to muddle sugar cubes in drinks. Anything bigger than a sugar cube would be to difficult to muddle and would require a different tool.