COFFEE, TEA, AND CHOCOLATE--POTS, THAT IS

I started this blog after seeing a photograph of a really cool chocolate pot. I had a preconceived idea that a tea pot, a coffee pot and a chocolate pot were very different items, and I set off into research to prove my hypothesis. Soon I was deep into a rabbit warren of Limoge and pottery and Colonial Williamsburg and dyeing wool and gunsmithing and mincemeat recipes and this truly amazing… I'm sure many of you have been there, too.

Anyway, I discovered that, while the shape of some pots is better for tea than coffee, and the placement of the spout is the only major difference, they can be—mostly—interchangeable.

For instance, a tea pot is usually shorter and rounder, to give more surface area on which the leaves can steep, while the coffee pot is normally taller and narrower, with a strainer of sorts built into the spout to keep the grounds in the pot. And often sometimes, the spout is further up the pot, so you don’t get those nasty dregs in your cup.

The chocolate pot is almost always tall and straight, to make stirring the chocolate easier. There’s sometimes a hole in the lid for the stirring stick, and the pitcher-like spout is shorter than that of a coffee pot and up at the top… But not always. [That's one of Thomas Jefferson's chocolate pots to the left.]

About the only thing I discovered that makes perfect sense? The pots are different shapes—whatever that shape may be—so the hostess doesn’t pour the wrong drink.

Regardless of your favorite drink or pot of choice, enjoy!
Tracy

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