Previous | Next

Treen is a general category word used to refer to wooden tools and utensils.

In the kitchen, these might be moulds, presses for making oatcakes, wooden platters, wooden spoons, bowls, chopping boards, string holders. Outside the kitchen, it would include items such as wooden shoe horns, wooden candlesticks and wooden pounce pots (to held the pounce you shook on a piece of paper to soak up excess ink.)

Some people also class as Treen big items such as large dough trenchers craved from a log, but others disagree, saying that "Treen" has to be small items only. And it definitely doesn't include furniture: a wooden kitchen clock or wooden kitchen chair wouldn't have been called Treen.

Treen was always purely functional ware with almost never any decoration on it, except for moulds to impart decoration to food items (such as a butter mould.) They were usually carved or made from a single piece of wood, not joined. Hardwood was the most valued wood for making them out of.

Not many "antique" Treen items survive because they weren't meant to be "last for ever" things. They wore out or broke, and were tossed.

The most common Treen items still in use in today's kitchens are wooden spoons, wooden spatulas, cutting boards, and wooden lemon reamers.

Language Notes
Treen is an obsolete English word meaning "from or of a tree."

See Also:

Citrus Juicer, Cutting Boards, Spatulas, Wooden Spoons

Other entries for: Cooking Tools

Alambic Stills, Apple Corer, Avocado Slicers, Baking Mats, Baking Stones, Batterie de Cuisine, Biscuit Brake, Blowtorches, Branding Iron, Bread Bins, Bread Machines, Bulb Baster, Butter Bell, Butter Muslin, Caja China, Can Openers, Canning Funnels, Cans, Chopsticks, Contact Paper, Cookware, Cooling Racks, Corkscrews, CorningWare, Cuppitiello, Dishwashers, Doughnut Cutters, Egg Cups, Esky, Fat Separators, Firkins, Flour Dredgers, Flour Duster, Food Pushers, Funnels, Girdle, Graters, Griddles, Heat Diffuser, Ice Pick, Icing Syringe, Kitchen String, Kitchen Tongs, Kneading Gloves, Knives, Measuring Cups, Melon Baller, Mesquite, Milk Cellar, Non-Electrical Rotisseries, Olive Pitter, Oshibori, Oxo Good Grips, Paraffin, Pastry Brush, Pastry Frame, Pea Sheller, Petites Marmites, Pie Plates, Pie Racks, Pizzelle Iron, Proof Box, Ramekins, Rolling Cookie Cutters, Rolling Pins, Salad Spinner, Salamanders, Scales, Spatulas, Steamers, Sugar Cutters, Sushi-oke, Tassie Cups, Tea Trappings, Thermometers, Tortilla Warmers, Tupperware, Uchiwa, Waffle Iron, Whisks