Growster, those are the modern spoon measures that make old family recipes go very wrong
The trouble started I believe with American recipes, which didn't weigh things, but used volume instead. They called the largest spoon you ate with a tablespoon, in the UK that size is called dessert spoon!
Wiki says
Victorian and Edwardian era tablespoons used in the UK are often 25 ml (0.85 US fl oz) or sometimes larger. They are used only for preparing and serving food, not as part of a place-setting.
So you can see that where my mum's passed down recipes call for a tablespoon measure, from her cutlery drawer she would have used a spoon of
at least 25ml whereas a modern tablespoon measure is only 15ml. Any clearer now?