“A big, pretty dish of lovin’ with a spoon”

LORELAI: A big, pretty dish of lovin’ with a spoon made especially for you.

This sounds like a reference to the rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful, founded in Greenwich Village in 1965 by singer John Sebastian and guitarist Zal Yanovsky. Their hits include Do You Believe in Magic? (1965), Summer in the City (1966), and Daydream (1966). The band broke up in 1969, but have had a few revivals and reunions over the years. An influence on British bands such as The Beatles and The Kinks, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, and into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2006.

The band’s name is taken from a line in the song Coffee Blues, by blues singer Mississippi John Hurt, a tribute to Maxwell House Coffee. There is a link in blues songs between a “spoonful” of something and sex (sometimes drugs); it has been conjectured that the “lovin’ spoonful” in the song refers to the amount of ejaculate in a typical male orgasm.

This connection between coffee, sex, and love seems very apt for Lorelai! It’s as if the coffee Luke makes for her is a metaphor for something else that’s hot and wet.