What Happened to Cream Soup Bowls?
I just finished auctioning at a Public Television auction. We had several dinner sets donated that had dinner, salad and butter plates, cups, saucers, sauce dishes, creamer, sugar, gravy boat, platters, serving bowls, and a mysterious group of what looked like a large cup with two handles and matching saucers. I guess no one serves in a cream soup bowl anymore. New sets use large rimmed bowls. Cream soups were part of Depression glass dinner sets in the 1930s, and formal china sets included them into the 1950s and, sometimes, later.
3 responses to “What Happened to Cream Soup Bowls?”
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CI have a set of 12 sterling cup holders with the bowl that go in them—They are gorgeous but no one wants them anymore–Can’t foist them on my children and it makes me so sad—the days of really entertaining seem to be history………
The two-handled bowls are for bouillon. They are still made – Apilco does them, for example, with stubby little handles. Cream soup bowls are flatter and generally have wide rims.
Soup bowls are an essential part of the formal/elegant dining eating accessory ensemble. Dining that requires designated dishes and utensils for eating (compared to even 40 years ago, a rather novel experience today) is now deemed rather “stiff” and is viewed as being too much work to effect. Plus, the host’s guest(s) must posses the knowledge of proper utensils to use with what is served during what course, AND must know, and use, appropriate manners for the affair: for example, one fills their soup spoon by scooping away from the self toward the opposite side of the soup bowl. To get to the last of the soup, one may tilt the bowl away from the self; soup bowl plates (under liner) usually accompany the soup bowl to catch drips and to serve as a rest for the spoon. Today, one bowl-for-all is a standard in dining, for better or worse — much easier. Likely the ‘cup’ bowls with handles you referenced are actually bullion bowls (while shallow, wide-rimmed bowls are true cream soup).