Talk:Sugar caster

Cruet

The article speaks of a "set", including a vinegar cruet, an oil cruet, and other vessels including a caster.

This usage is alien to me. In my understanding, a cruet is a set of dispensers for savoury condiments: oil, vinegar, prepared mustard, salt, and ground pepper, all arranged on a tray, and usually silver or plate. The salt would be in a pierced silver container, itself containing a blue glass bowl (because otherwise the salt would corrode the silver). The mustard would be served in a similar way, because prepared mustard often also includes corrosive ingredients (vinegar). Both the salt and the mustard would have a lid, and a little spoon, for which an opening would be present in the lid. The "cruet" is the set, complete with the tray. Nobody would ever put a sugar caster on such a tray; you don't generally sprinkle sugar on your salad or your steak. Most normal people don't drizzle vinegar or smear mustard on their raspberries-and-cream. Sugar is not normally served at the same time as salt, mustard, vinegar or pepper.

Back in the day, nobody in England used black pepper; pepper was white (or rather, grey), and sufficiently finely-ground that it could reasonably be served in a shaker with fine holes. Nobody used a grinder for white pepper; and the very idea of a salt-grinder was bizarre (good Lord, grinding salt is servant's work). MrDemeanour (talk) 18:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Descriptive suggestion

It is difficult to get an idea of the size of a typical sugar castor from the image of an 18th century sugar castor and from the description in the article. Adding some kind of scaling size for comparison would strengthen the information for readers, such as a standard match stick or standard wine cork. NHGuru (talk) 08:21, 1 January 2025 (UTC)