Ever wonder why some folks from the Indian subcontinent say - “Could I have a peg of whisky?“ instead of “ Could I have a shot of whisky?”
A peg is a unit of volume in the Indian subcontinent used to measure liquor and roughly equates to 60 ml or 2 oz. Introduced during the British Raj for convenience, it was later standardized to 60ml for convenience. Thus, Informally, a peg is understood to be mean a shot of any alcoholic drink.
This rare dual sided English antique silver peg measuring cup or “jigger”, with engravings of rural India, dates around 1910, and is used to measure pegs of alcohol. The larger cup holds a peg and the smaller 1/2 peg which equates to 2 and 1oz respectively. This jigger is about 11 cm in height and has a large cup with a 5cm dia, and a smaller cup with a 4.3 dia and weighs about 82grams.
