Food History

Please forgive the picture. It has absolutely nothing to do with this post. The trouble is, my little camera just can’t do the fine detail I need for the picture of my choice today. The picture of my choice, is, of course, to illuminate my special subject of the day. When I do my food history course next February I’ll see if one of my students can get a good shot when I bring it in for show and tell.

It’s a strange little artifact of food history, though I myself am the wrong sex to use it.

What is it? I really want to insert an evil laugh, because you have enough information already if you want to work it out. Let me give you some background instead of the evil laugh - maybe you’ll work it out before I say what it is. Maybe you won’t.

I took an hour off today and did some shopping. I visited the nearest antique shop (which I have been avoiding for as long as it has existed, because I know my fragilities where antique foodie stuff is concerned) and discovered that modern Australian antique buyers are fascinated by chamber pots. This explains all the questions about toilets I get in my classes. But no, I wasn’t going to buy a chamber pot: I bought a cup and a saucer. It’s probably nineteenth century and probably from Continental Europe. My nether brain said Germany or maybe Vienna, but I know nothing about ceramics from that period, so my nether brain is unreliable. The cup is shaped like an acorn (if acorns had handles) and the saucer has oak leaves cut into it. What’s special about it, is that it’s a moustache cup.

In 1830, an Englishman put a little ledge on the inside of the cups he made, so that a gentleman’s moustache could remain safe from his hot drinks (remember, moustaches were waxed and made beautiful, and a hot drink could be fatal to its dapperness) and a gentleman’s nice cuppa could remain safe from the product he used to keep his moustache delightful. By World War II, they had kinda petered out. So for a hundred years (or thereabouts) they mildly modified drinking habits.

I’m trying to envisage a big man with a good moustache drinking out of my delicate acorn and I’m failing miserably. It’s a useful addition to my classroom showpieces, though. It can come in with the coffee and my other little coffee cup. I need to tell you about that, too, but not today.