Why do Americans measure everything in cups?

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

Used a couple of US recipes recently and most of the ingredients are in cups, or spoons, not by weight. This is a nightmare to convert. Do Americans not own scales or something? What’s the reason for measuring everything by volume?

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Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Apparently the French sent over a metric system for the Americans to use, but the ship was lost.

npr.org/…/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-a…

I’ve seen numerous sources for this.

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- morphballganon@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  OP is asking about volume vs weight, not metric volume vs imperial volume.
  
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  - Dagwood222@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    If the US had adopted the metric system it wouldn’t matter.
    
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- inspxtr@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  someone should make an alternate history tv show where the ship made it. bonus if it’s of a parody kind.
  
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reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Watch some cooking shows on YouTube where they cook from two hundred year old cookbooks. Weighing stuff is a modern thing. All the “ye olde recipes” from Europe and the colonies were done in cups, spoons, and other volume measurements we don’t use anymore like “jills”.

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- IndiBrony@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  “the” and “ye” are amusingly redundant next to each other.
  
  I was positively intrigued the day I learned “ye olde shoppe” is pronounced exactly the same way as “the old shop”.
  
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- pete_the_cat@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  “A handful of this, a sprig of that, a penny weight of some other stuff”
  
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- MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Back in my childhood (60+ years ago) we had recipes that called for a “breakfast cup’ of this and a “teacup” of that. And yes, we did have actual breakfast cups and teacups, which had significantly different volumes. What kind of cup do they use in the US I wonder?
  
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- VinesNFluff@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I see someone watches tasting history
  
  My favourite is when the book told him to put on a “good amount” of something
  
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- Alpha71@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  5 rods to the hogs head.
  
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- jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Jiggers. 1.5 oz. Or a pony shot (small end of the jigger) 0.75 oz.
  
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- frezik@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Bartenders routinely measure mixed drink additives in “barspoons”.
  
  My grandmother in law has a biscuit recipe that starts with “fill the bowl with flour”. What bowl? The bowl she’s been making biscuits with for 50 years.
  
  Point is, people left to their own devices will use whatever measurement is handy.
  
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pete_the_cat@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The imperial system is a nightmare. A lot of us hate it and agree that metric is far easier. I grew up with the imperial system and still don’t know the conversions between quarts, pints, ounces, and cups.

I’m currently calorie counting in order to lose weight and I weigh everything in grams because it’s easier.

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- IMALlama@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This isn’t about imperial vs metric, it’s about measuring by mass vs volume. A good example here is flour. Weighing out 30 grams (or about 1 ounce) of flour will always result in the same amount. On the other hand, you can densely pack flour into a 1/4 cup measuring cup, you can gingerly spoon it in little by little, or you can scoop and level. When you do this you’ll get three different amounts of flour, even though they all fill that 1/4 cup. Good luck consistently measuring from scoop to scoop even if you use the same method for each scoop.
  
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  - Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Jokes on you. When we measure flour on the moon, it’s the same as on earth. You just don’t understand our advance measurement technique with your primitive weighing.
    
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  - SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Something something elevation and atmospheric pressure resulting in a proper measurement across altitude… Or something.
    
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- Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Blame the French and British, we got it from them!
  
  Like 99% of the world, the French and British long ago managed to overcome the imperial system. Actually, the French spearheaded the metric world.
  
  America just failed, time and again, to follow the times.
  
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  - FleetingTit@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The british didn’t quite overcome the old ways of measuring. They still use miles, pints, stone, and so on.
    
    Companies just need to print the metric amount on the box as well.
    
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- remotelove@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I am converting my life to metric, actually. All of my CAD work is in metric and all of my chemistry glass is thankfully in metric. Thinking in longer distances is something I need to get used to though.
  
  The imperial system is just a waste of time, TBH. I am sure there are a ton of people that can work fractions in their head but I just gotta ask: Why, and what is the point?
  
  Measuring and planning with metric is just so damn easy and no extra steps are generally needed. When I need to convert 1000mm I just move the decimal over a bit and get 1km. EZ.
  
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  - GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    When I need to convert 1000mm I just move the decimal over a bit and get 1km. EZ.
    
    🤔
    
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  - captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I keep using this example: In the wood shop, I’m going to cut a bridle joint. Requires cutting boards into thirds of their thickness. Metric lumber is often milled to 19mm thick. What’s a third of 19mm? You want to show me which line means 6.3333mm on a metric tape measure? US Customary lumber is milled to 3/4" thick. What’s a third of 3/4"? You want to show me which line means 1/4" on an inch tape measure? Now let’s cut a half-lap joint in that same lumber. In metric that works out to 9.5mm, there’s also no line on a typical metric tape measure for that. But there is a line for 3/8".
    
    I’d much rather build furniture in inches than millimeters because in the wood shop I have to divide or multiply by powers of 2, 3 and 4 way more often than powers of 10. It is in this context that the inch standard which is subdivided by powers of two rather than ten arose, and it still works very well.
    
    Metric users often correctly accuse Imperial or US Customary (though the two share names of units they are not identical) users of making excuses or relying on workarounds, in the context of woodworking joinery I find it’s the reverse. “Of course we don’t use 6.3333mm, you just know to cut the cheeks 6mm and the tongue 7mm. 6+6+7 is 19.”
    
    I’ll grant you, doing stoichiometry in ounces and pounds would be a fucking nightmare. But woodworking joinery? Nah I’m doing that in fractional inches.
    
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  - FalseMyrmidon@kbin.run ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    When all of your factory tooling and off the shelf parts are in imperial, you use that. :shrug:
    
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  - skeezix@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Have you converted fuck-tonnes to metric?
    
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  - okamiueru@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    What do you do for nuts and bolts? Isn’t that stuff harder to get?
    
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  - frezik@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I find specific situations where customary units are handy. Fahrenheit has a nicer range for precise cooking temperature, such as for sous vide. 1 degree centigrade is a wider range than 1 degree fahrenheit. Dropping down to milligrades is too precise. Fahrenheit is just right.
    
    Metric is lashed to orders of magnitude precision, and it gets in the way here. Being able to convert things, like knowing how much energy it takes to heat 1 cubic centimeter of water by 1 degree centigrade, also isn’t useful in the kitchen unless you’re doing some deep molecular gastronomy shit.
    
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- AtariDump@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Image
  
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- quindraco@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  8 ounces to a cup, 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon.
  
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  - pete_the_cat@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    And now to commit that to memory for the nth time…and immediately forget it.
    
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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because it’s quicker to just use a measuring cup than by weighing it out every time, I assume.

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- DarkThoughts@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  If you'd use metric, then weight & measurements on measuring cups would be basically the same. Like, 1 liter or milk or water is exactly 1 Kg. Using arbitrary measurements like "cups" or "feet" are just confusing and prone to error.
  
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  - HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Milk has a specific gravity slightly higher than 1, so that isn’t accurate.
    
    Also, “cups” and “feet” aren’t arbitrary. They aren’t part of the metric system, but a cup is a standardized unit of volume and a foot is a standardized unit of length.
    
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  - Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    We know
    
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  - teft@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    1 liter of milk weighs more than 1 kilo. Milk is denser than water therefore 1 liter of it has to weigh more than water.
    
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  - tate@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Water isn’t the only ingredient. One liter of flour is not nearly one kilogram. More importantly, the mass of one liter of flour varies a lot depending on how much it settled in the container. That’s why weight is always the better way to measure ingredients.
    
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- SuiXi3D@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ding ding ding!
  
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captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
“Do Americans not own scales or something?”

For a good long while, no they didn’t. For a large fraction of American history a typical home kitchen had no bespoke measuring equipment at all; but tea cups, tea spoons and table spoons were typically available and made to pretty similar sizes, plus if you always used the same ones the proportions would be roughly the same, so meh.

A lot of traditional recipes were written this way, and it has remained so by tradition. A system of inexpensive, easy to manufacture measuring cups and spoons became standard equipment by the mid-20th century, and hasn’t changed to this day because it works just fine.

The US government is in the habit of publishing recipes with a deliberately low minimum equipment list. The United States Department of Agriculture for example conducts extensive testing on home canning recipes and methods, and deliberately writes their recipes to be used in poorly equipped kitchens, because the kind of folks who rely on putting up home grown vegetables for the winter don’t tend to spend a lot of money on Sharper Image kitchen gadgetry. Flipping through my copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, I find about a third of recipes could be made using nothing but a mason jar or two as your only measuring tool, as most mason jars (excluding the deliberately decorative ones) have graduation marks in cups, ounces and milliliters molded into them.

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fitgse@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Most Americans I know don’t even have a scale in their kitchen!

I (an American) always wonder what a cup of spinach is. Like I can really pack it into a cup or not and there is a huge difference.

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- Blizzard@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  By the way, there’s just one size of cups in America?
  
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  - Delta_V@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The things people drink out of are many different sizes of course, but when the word “cup” is used in the context of a measure of volume, then yes, they’re called “measuring cups”, and the volume is standardized.
    
    Same thing with teaspoons and tablespoons. They’re not just any random spoon - when talking about measurements, they have a standardized volume and you need to use a cheap and ubiquitous measuring device if you want to follow a recipe precisely.
    
    Most people in USA do not have a scale in their kitchen, but we do have a measuring cup and a set of measuring spoons.
    
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  - themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    “cup” is a unit of measure like a foot. It measures volume and it is approx equal to 236 ml.
    
    There also exist metric cups with a round 250 ml, supposedly for easier adoption of the metric system.
    
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  - ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    A measuring cup is a specific size, about 237mL. There’s a whole system of US measurements, actually:
    
    3 teaspoons in a tablespoon
    
    2 tablespoons in an ounce
    
    8 ounces in a cup
    
    2 cups in a pint
    
    2 pints in a quart
    
    4 quarts in a gallon
    
    Not all cups are measuring cups; if you are having a cup of coffee that doesn’t mean your cup is exactly 8oz. You just infer from context that if someone is talking about ingredients then you should measure them with a measuring cup.
    
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  - howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ve seen “cups” used to mean anywhere between 225ml and 250ml. It’s very confusing.
    
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scoobford@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Volumetric measurements, like the imperial system, is largely in place due to tradition.

But no, most people do not own good food scales. They aren’t pricey (I think mine was $25), but they are very uncommon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in a store.

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- i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m amazed they are that uncommon. Here (UK) you can walk into a supermarket and pick them up for less than £20.
  
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  - palebluethought@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    “uncommon” is an overstatement, you can get them pretty much anywhere that has pots. It’s uncommon in that most people don’t bother owning one, not that they’re hard to get
    
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- r0ertel@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think you’re.right about tradition. I have a set of recipes from 3 generations ago. It’s been converted over the generations from a list of ingredients to “a fistful of flour” to “a juice glass of broth” to “1/3 cup of butter” as it was passed to me. Maybe my contribution will be to convert it to weight and pass it to my kids for them to finally convert it to metric weights.
  
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Do Americans not own scales or something?

I do not own a kitchen scale. Outside of baking, volume works well enough.

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- echo64@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Not with salt or anything granular. Liquid is probably fine
  
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  - HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It works well enough for me. Salt is relatively uniform, so there isn’t that much variance. With spices, the variance of the spice strength is greater than the variance caused by compaction.
    
    Outside of baking, the tolerance required to get a dish to taste good is rather wide.
    
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  - ickplant@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Literally never had a problem with any recipe, ever. This is a non-issue.
    
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  - howrar@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Salt tends to be used in such small quantities that you’ll get much larger errors on the typical kitchen scale than with measuring spoons.
    
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  - whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Never have I ever thought “oh it would be so much easier to pour my flour into a bowl on a scale” rather than just scoop out a few cups.
    
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esc27@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons in this context are standardized units of measure. It is very common to find at least one set of measuring cups and spoons in a US kitchen. Scales are uncommon.

I use both. For flour, scales are far, far superior. For sugar, it does not really seem to matter. For small amounts, I suspect my tea/tablespoons might be more accurate than my scale…

Not that accuracy matters that much in a recipe using eggs. Chickens aren’t necessarily known for precision.

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- Hule@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Off topic:
  
  I have learned that hens were laying eggs, chicken were the offspring.
  
  Is this a british-american thing or just a common mistake?
  
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  - SandLight@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Chicks are baby chickens. All hens and roosters are chickens. Does that answer your question?
    
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Paraneoptera@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think it goes back to Fannie Farmer in 1896, who wrote the first major and comprehensive cookbook in English that used any kind of standard measurements. European cookbooks mostly used vague instructions without any standardized weights or numbers before that. At this point in the industrialized world standardized cup measures were relatively cheap and available. Scales were relatively bulky, expensive, and inaccurate in 1896. So the whole tradition got started, and most of the major cookbooks owed something to Fannie Farmer. Cookbooks that used standardized weights probably got started in other countries much later, when scales were becoming commonplace.

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HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
the truth is americans kind of just do things arbitrarily.

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- AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  shittily
  
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- ChexMax@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This is a thoughtless take. Do you know how hard it is to do things randomly? It takes way more work than doing things for a reason. Just because you don’t know the reason, you assume it’s arbitrary? That kind of thinking is why simple rules and instructions don’t get followed mucking up entire systems.
  
  From another comment on this thread:
  
  “I think it goes back to Fannie Farmer in 1896, who wrote the first major and comprehensive cookbook in English that used any kind of standard measurements. European cookbooks mostly used vague instructions without any standardized weights or numbers before that. At this point in the industrialized world standardized cup measures were relatively cheap and available. Scales were relatively bulky, expensive, and inaccurate in 1896. So the whole tradition got started, and most of the major cookbooks owed something to Fannie Farmer. Cookbooks that used standardized weights probably got started in other countries much later, when scales were becoming commonplace.”
  
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- Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  “merica bad” ok edgelord
  
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Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Shutout to the one dude who downvoted literally every comment lol I hope you enjoyed it

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Squirrel@thelemmy.club ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As an American who has recently learned to love his scale, I’m with you 100%.

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- GiddyGap@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Just another one of those things where the rest of world looks at the US and shakes its head. There seems to be a lot of things in the US purely in place based on tradition and logic goes out the window.
  
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  - subtext@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    But also, there’s no real incentive to change… my brownies taste just fine with a 1/3 cup of oil and a 1/3 cup of water. I am sure they would taste just as good with 80 g of each, but if it works, why change it?
    
    What logic is there in saying grams are better than cups of both work well for the intended task? If I were a professional baker, it’s entirely possible I would have a different opinion, but I (like 99% of Americans) am not.
    
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  - Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Why should I take an extra step to weigh everything out? Why should I give up some valuable counter space for a food scale? That’s just extra work for no reason.
    
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lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m not American but this is likely due to tradition. Recipe measures it in cups, you follow recipe, you get used to cups, then when writing your own recipe down you do it by cups.

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tcrpz@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So many in the comments are talking about volume being more convenient but I find it so much more convenient to put a bowl on a scale, tare it, measure, and set it aside. Sure that’s more steps than using a cup, but when I have to fumble with a cup, a 1/3rd cup, a teaspoon, an 1/2 teaspoon and a tablespoon, all for a single recipe, especially one where dry and wet ingredients are being measured, a pain in the ass. So many little dishes that I may or may not need to rinse and dry between ingredients that call for the same measurement.

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- BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Go back 100, 200 years.
  
  Hell, go back 40 years. Scales were less available, and before digital scales, much slower, take up space, and cost much more than cups and spoons, which you would still need.
  
  100 years ago, even a poor person with little space could have a full set of measuring cups/spoons.
  
  Cups and spoons are sufficiently accurate for anything other than baking. Even with baking, many simpler recipes it’s still OK. My mother and grandmother baked many things using cups and spoons.
  
  I still use cups and spoons for anything other than baking - they’re sufficiently accurate. Why pull out a scale for things like 1/8 tsp ground pepper? Is that even a gram?
  
  King Arthur, the flour company that’s been around over 220 years, publishes numerous recipes that were originally in cups and spoons (because those were the tools 200 years ago), and those recipes are still in cups and spoons. Their muffin recipe is delicious.
  
  English muffins originated in the late 1800s, using volumetric measures - they’re still around, still delicious. I’ve made them, using volumetric measures.
  
  Ever weighed 8oz of water?
  
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  - NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It weighs a cup
    
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- wjrii@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Now imagine doing this before cheap digital scales were available. Cheap analog kitchen scales were utter garbage – inaccurate, wobbly, bulky, and sometimes impossible to tare – but cheap measuring cups and spoons generally work very nearly as well as expensive ones.
  
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- EssentialCoffee@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s a lot easier for me to scoop 1/2 teaspoon of two spices, one tablespoon of another, and 2 teaspoons of a fourth than to measure 1.8 grams of one, 2.2 grams of one, 5.2 grams of one, and 3.8 grams of a fourth. The scoops I can put in the container and level off the top using the same container. The other way, I have to gently sprinkle or slowly scoop and sprinkle so it doesn’t go over the required amount.
  
  Way faster for me to scoop, level, dump.
  
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- Zess@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Oh my god, rinsing a few dishes. How will you ever recover.
  
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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m always confused by their insistence to use fluid ounces.

An ounce is fine it’s a measurement to wait. But how can you measure liquids by weight when really what you mean is displacement.its like saying fluid kilograms, it’s not a thing, it makes no sense.

I know Americans probably know what it means but everybody else doesn’t have a clue. If you have 250 fluid oz of something is that like a bucket or a single droplet? Or is it a small booting lake, I have no idea at all.

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- Ross_audio@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Fl. Oz are actually nothing to do with weight. They are volume.
  
  For each fluid oz. use 30 ml
  
  It’s only approximate but the official measurements for nutrition actually do it in the US so it’s not a real unit anyway anymore.
  
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  - spongebue@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Fl. Oz are actually nothing to do with weight. They are volume.
    
    Well yes, but also no. It is a unit of volume, but it comes from the volume that an ounce of fluid (specifically water) uses. Not at all unlike a gram being based on a cubic centimeter of water, which we also call a milliliter. Imperial just makes that a little more transparent, which also makes things a little more confusing.
    
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- ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The metric system uses a similar principle. 1 liter is a kg of water. It’s just named better.
  
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downpunxx@fedia.io ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
weren't many digital scales out on the prairie when the settlers were looking to make bread

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EfreetSK@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m with you but I get it that sometimes it’s convenient. My wife likes what we call “cup recipes” in baking where everything is measured in cups/glasses (this was a new thing couple of years ago where I live). It’s very fast and convenient.

But yes, it gets out of hand. I mean “a cup of celery”? … How? Why?

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ButWhatDoesItAllMean@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
American here but I do a lot of baking, I do own a scale and prefer to weigh ingredients because I’m amazed at the different quantities of flour I can get from cup to cup depending how packed the flour is or how I scoop it.

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fidodo@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because it’s often easier to measure things by volume, and most cooking dishes do not need precise measurements. It sucks for baking dishes, but for anything that doesn’t need to be precise I find it way more convenient to grab a volume measurement than a scale

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Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The units used in the kirchen make sense, firstly because cups, spoons and shit are common things found in the kitchen, secondly because precision is not really a priority and thirdly because coocking is about proportions.

I usually take a piss on the american pathetic unit system anyway

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HatchetHaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Unless you’re baking cakes from scratch for fun or trying to make aesthetically perfect macarons, I just don’t really see a reason to use a scale.

With cup measurements, it’s scoop, level, dump. I hate having to fuss around with getting perfect measurements of ingredients; it’s the second-most boring part of cooking.

I really subscribe to Adam Ragusea’s methodology of “cooking by feel”, and just so happens it aligns with how my own culture treats cooking as well.

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ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It really depends what sort of recipes you’re making, but for cooking very loose approximations are often fine.

I often have to convert to weight/mass in order to find out how much of an ingredient to buy. I have no idea how many cups an eggplant is. But once I get it home the recipe might as well say “however much eggplant you have.”

If I’m truly off, I will typically scale up the recipe adjusting for the extra meat or vegetable content. I’ll more or less assume that 1lb of meat is interchangeable with 1lb of veggies. That’s not quite true, in particular with salt.

Your mileage may vary though. Some recipes and ingredients are much more sensitive to deviations.

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BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
History.

Why do Brits use Stone for weight of people? Same answer.

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jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Eh, it’s what I grew up with…

3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon (14.787ml)
1 tablespoon = .5 ounces
8 ounces = 1 cup (236.588ml)
1 cup = .5 pints
1 pint = .5 quarts (473.176ml)
1 quart = .25 gallons

The weird thing is, above 20 ounces, sodas are sold in metric. 1L, 2L, 3L. So is alcohol, 750ml.

Milk and juice are sold in ounces, pints, quarts and gallons.

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stanleytweedle@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Because it’s quick and the tools to measure volume are cheap and simple and for cooking for a few people in a home kitchen it works well enough.

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Sanctus@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
No think, grab spoon/cup, dump.

Source: USAian.

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Leviathan@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I switched to weighing everything a few years ago and I when I moved I didn’t have to have a set of spoons, dry cups, wet cups. I just use the scale.

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Zerlyna@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=yduDPjzkXI7G6rJH

This.

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paultimate14@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Most baking doesn’t require the precision of weighing. They are rough proportions, not an exact science.

An experienced baker, or really any kind of chef, will learn over time to make minor adjustments based on a lot of stuff. Maybe a bit less sugar, to taste. Maybe a difference in the brand or exact type of ingredient compared to what you’re used to. Maybe it’s a particularly dry day and you need to add more moisture to the dough.

If it’s something I have a lot of experience with I don’t even bother with measuring at all, just eyeball it.

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