In common usage, a scoop is any specialized

spoon A spoon is a utensil consisting of a shallow bowl (also known as a head), oval or round, at the end of a handle. A type of cutlery (sometimes called flatware in the United States), especially as part of a place setting, it is used primarily for ...

used to serve food. In the technical terms used by the food service industry and in the retail and wholesale food utensil industries, there is a clear distinction between three types of scoop: the disher, which is used to measure a portion e.g.

cookie dough Cookie dough is an un-cooked blend of cookie ingredients. Cookie dough is normally intended to be baked into individual cookies before eating, however edible cookie dough is made to be eaten as is, and usually is made without eggs to make it safer ...

, to make

melon ball Melon ballers are utensils to make balls of melon from a scoop with a diameter from around 1 centimeter to 3 centimeters (about 3/8 inch to 1 inch). They are generally used to make fruit salad. Melon balls are made by pressing them into the melo ...

s, and often to serve

ice cream Ice cream is a sweetened frozen food typically eaten as a snack or dessert. It may be made from milk or cream and is flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit such as str ...

(although manufacturers frequently advise against using dishers for ice cream and other frozen foods); ice cream scoops, and the scoop which is used to measure or to transfer an unspecified amount of a bulk dry foodstuff such as rice, flour, or sugar.

Disher

Dishers are usually

hemispherical A sphere () is a Geometry, geometrical object that is a solid geometry, three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three ...

like an ice cream scoop, while measuring scoops are usually

cylindrical A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infini ...

, and transfer scoops are usually

shovel A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore. Most shovels are hand tools consisting of a broad blade fixed to a medium-length handle. Shovel blades are usually made of ...

-shaped. Some dishers have mechanical levers which help expel the disher's contents. Traditionally dishers are sized by the number of scoops per

quart The quart (symbol: qt) is an English unit of volume equal to a quarter gallon. Three kinds of quarts are currently used: the liquid quart and dry quart of the US customary system and the of the British imperial system. All are roughly equal ...

but may also be sized by

ounces The ounce () is any of several different units of mass, weight or volume and is derived almost unchanged from the , an Ancient Roman unit of measurement. The avoirdupois ounce (exactly ) is avoirdupois pound; this is the United States customa ...

, the

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...

of the bowl, or the number of

tablespoons A tablespoon (tbsp. , Tbsp. , Tb. , or T.) is a large spoon. In many English-speaking regions, the term now refers to a large spoon used for serving; however, in some regions, it is the largest type of spoon used for eating. By extension, the ter ...

they hold.

Ice cream scoop

Some higher-end ice cream scoops have a thermally conductive liquid in the handle to help keep the ice cream from freezing to the scoop's metal.

History

Alfred L. Cralle, a porter in a drug store and at a hotel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, noticed that servers at the hotel had trouble with ice cream sticking to serving spoons, and he developed an ice cream scoop. On June 10 1896, Cralle applied for a patent on his invention. He was awarded patent 576,395 on 2 February 1897. The patented "Ice Cream Mold and Disher," was an ice cream scoop with a built-in scraper to allow for one-handed operation. Cralle's functional design is reflected in modern ice cream scoops.

Transfer scoop

Transfer scoops (a.k.a. utility scoops) are used to transfer bulk foods from large storage containers to smaller containers, and generally do not have any measurement markings, as their purpose is to transfer, and taking time to adjust the amount in a scoop would slow the transfer rate.

Other types

* Ice scoop * Coffee scoop * Spooner * Dipper * French fry scoop

Standard sizes

The table below is the standard definition in the U.S. food industry, but actual capacity varies by manufacturer. Image:Small_transfer_scoop.JPG, Transfer scoop File:Ice Cream Scoop.jpg, Zerolon Ice cream scoop with heat conductive fluid and a green handle cap, indicating a #16 scoop (Zerolon Scoops use a different color coding, where the size # is the number of double scoop servings in a gallon of ice cream) Image:CaramelCorn.jpg, Large aluminum scoop, here with

caramel corn Caramel corn or caramel popcorn (toffee popcorn in the UK) is a confection made of popcorn coated with a sugar or molasses based caramel candy shell that is normally less than 1mm thick. Typically a sugar solution or syrup is made and heated until ...

References

{{Kitchen tools Spoons American inventions Serving utensils Customary units of measurement in the United States