via:visitgreece,gr
I tasted “spoon sweets” for the very first time when I was very young. In our garden my grandfather had planted two apricot trees which made delicious apricots and their stone was as sweet as almonds. Every summer around June, my mother used to pick apricots while they were still hard. The ripe fruit was used by the ladies living in the neighborhood to make delicious jam. I remember my mother doing this job with love and patience. She would wash the apricots, peal them, left them overnight in lime and then placed them carefully in a large heavy pot to cook them. Instead of almonds she would add in the sweet the stones of the apricots which she would break with a wooden hammer. The sweet smell of apricot remains for days at home. And the color of the syrup was so bright…
Aunt Asimina used to make sweet and sour cherries from the trees she had in her yard while grandmother Elenitsa was a specialist in making sweet grape with lots of almonds.
The serving of this particular type of sweets in the 50′s was still a ritual. The jars with the sweets of various fruit were locked in a closet away from the reach of children of the house. The jars appeared whenever there were visitors at home. The “spoon sweet” was served in a special jar with spoons hanging from its neck. Each visitor would take a spoonful of the sweet straight from the jar and serve it on a special crystal plate. Probably the name of this sweet comes from this particular procedure.
“Spoon sweet”! A unique name! I could never find a corresponding name in other languages. The “Spoon sweet” slowly began to lose its primacy in the family houses. As in the 60’s the electric refrigerator found its place in Greek homes, initially in big cities and later in little towns and villages, the ladies of the house turned their interest into more sophisticated sweets based on outlandish ingredients which could be kept in the refrigerator. The “spoon sweet” was put aside and began to be regarded as old fashioned, forgotten by most households even in the country side…
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