Food and Drink: Coconuts overview image

Food and Drink: Coconuts

  • Post Date: 01/29/2019
  • Author: Registration staff
  • Reading Time: 2 minute read

At Spurlock, we love to talk about food. Humans need food. Humans love food! It provides sustenance, highlights moments of celebration, and promotes sharing. Looking at objects in the Museum’s artifact collection, it’s also cool to see how one type of food is prepared and eaten in different ways across different cultures. For our second entry, we will look at coconuts.

Coconuts are grown in a tropical band across the globe and can be found on the continents of North and South America, Asia, and Africa. Milk, oil, and meat from the coconut are all put to use in cooking and food prep. As both a food and water source, coconuts were popular to take aboard ships for long voyages, which contributed to their worldwide distribution.

The coconut graters in the Museum’s collection come from Southeast Asia and East Africa. The graters are designed as seats with a sharp pointed object at one end for breaking open the coconut and prying out the meat. The graters come in two styles: a stool type and an open type. The stool types are shaped like standard stools, while the open types fold out into a seat.