Just a comment from your resident (retired) zoologist about the punch ladle article:
http://www.ascasonline.org/articoloOTTO67.html
The shell-shapes in Figure 3 are called "nautilus" shells. Nautilus shells are a flat spiral, coiling in one plane:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus
The ladles are in the shape of a snail shell, most likely intended to be one of the edible species, such as:
http://www.123rf.com/photo_2154662_heli ... snail.html
Not intending to be argumentative, here, but how would you tell if you had a punch ladle without a lip vs. a soup ladle?
One expects the soup ladle to be larger — a serving of soup typically being larger than a serving of punch — though there must be at least some ladles where size, alone, would not distinguish them. With soup, the bowl is typically larger in diameter than the ladle, so even a thin soup is not going to dribble outside the bowl. Alcohol reduces the surface tension and viscosity of water, so an alcoholic beverage spills and splashes more easily than plain water or juice, making the lip on the ladle even more of an imperative. I just can't picture pouring something as thinly liquid as an alcoholic punch into little glasses without a lip on the ladle.
