[f. SPOON sb. + MEAT sb.] Soft or liquid food for taking with a spoon, esp. by infants or invalids.
1555. W. Watreman, Fardle of Facions, II. x. 225. Thei are ware, not to spill any spone meate.
1573. Tusser, Husb. (1878), 101. No spoone meat no bellifull, labourers thinke.
1639. O. Wood, Alph. Bk. Secrets, 195. Eate neither Milke, Broath, nor spoone meat, salt meats, nor fried.
1675. Hannah Woolley, Gentlew. Comp., 71. Do not venture to eat Spoon-meat so hot, that the tears stand in your eyes.
1740. Cibber, Apol. (1756), II. 114. To shew that he was a child, they fed him on the stage with spoon-meat.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., I. xi. Did he, at one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat?
1884. Huxley, in L. Huxley, Life (1900), II. 70. A fortnight’s spoon-meat reduced me to inanity.
b. With a and pl. A kind of this.
1611. Cotgr., Ioncade, a certaine spoone-meat made of creame, Rose-water, and Sugar.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., VI. 217. To refresh the Patient with Broths and comfortable Spoon-meats.
1705. trans. Bosman’s Guinea, 106. The best … that the poor Sick can get here, are Culinary Vegetables and Spoon-Meats.
1783. Med. Comm., I. 238. It allowed spoon-meats to pass.
c. fig. and transf.
1589. R. Harvey, Pl. Perc. (1860), 9. Martin cald his Arguments Spoon Meat in his protest.
1608. Dekker, Belman of London, Wks. (Grosart), III. 166. The fift Iump, is called Spoone-meate, and that is a messe of knauerie serued in about Supper time.
1649. G. Daniel, Trinarch, Hen. IV., lxxxviii. Aldermen are still Caudle and Custard, Spoon-meat to the Mouth Of present Power.
1879. Geo. Eliot, Theo. Such, v. 113. All human achievement must be wrought down to this spoon-meat.
