Although the volume or weight of a dollop has never been precisely established, it is roughly the amount of warm butter that you can scoop onto the end of a spatula before dropping it into your frying pan. This culinary sense of dollop is a fairly recent development, apparently having originated in the nineteenth century; prior to this, and as early as the mid sixteenth century, dollop referred to a clump of grass in a field. The origin of the word is unclear, but it is probably related somehow to the Norwegian dolp, meaning lump. Other small and indefinite measurements sometimes used by cooks include dab and smidgen. Dab arose as a verb in the early fourteenth century and meant to peck, as a bird does when it is gobbling up grubs or seeds; it then came to denote any sort of swiping motion, and finally, in the mid eighteenth century, came to refer to a clump of material, like butter, that might be smooshed onto an implement, like a knife, by making a swiping motion. Smidgen, first recorded in the mid nineteenth century, appears to have developed from the older switch, also meaning a small amount; in turn, smitch likely evolved from the now-obsolete smit, which denoted a small piece of something—ice, for example—struck off from a larger chunk. Smit arose as a noun form of the verb smite, meaning to strike, and therefore its descendant, smidgen, is related to smith, a person who hammers metal on an anvil, and to smithereens, meaning tiny fragments.
A small quantity or dollop of a whipped substance, such as whipped cream, often measured by a lump, spoonful, or dab.