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?
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?
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.
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.
It’s close enough for home cooking, the specific gravity of milk is around 1030g/L so unless your recipe calls for multiple liters of Milk the small difference isn’t going to affect the result.
And now you are getting to the reason why American use volume for recipes. If I don’t need the precision of mass for recipes as it won’t appreciably affect the taste, then why break out the scale?
Because the difference between packing a cup of flour and not packing a cup of flour is as much as 30%
https://www.loveandoliveoil.com/2020/01/weight-vs-volume-measurements-in-baking-and-the-best-way-to-measure-flour.html#:~:text=So depending on how you,of 150 grams (!!)
It doesn’t really matter for liquids, but dry ingredients are a whole other ballgame when it comes to this mess.
It’s really mainly only flour though, because can be compacted, most of the things that you’re using in the kitchen like baking powder or sugar aren’t going to be compacted to any appreciable level.
For flour, you pour it into your measuring cup and then run the spine of a knife or something over it to get rid of the excess flour and get a level cup
There are many of other things that can be compacted or have different volume to weight ratios.
Corn starch is like flour, you can pack it down.
Salt (Table vs Kosher) Kosher salt has about half the volume to weight as table salt.
Shredded Cheese (this one always bugs me. Is it 3 cups after shredding, or before… how packed in should it be), etc.
Also, the proper amount of shredded cheese is the container.
A lot of volumetric baking recipes tell you to run the grain through a sieve to remove clumps, this generally standardizes the density well enough.
Salt is usually assumed to be table salt unless noted in the recipe. Even then, most recipes have a point to them where they tell you to taste the food and add salt to taste as necessary.
What are you cooking with shredded cheese where the ratio is that important?
Are you measuring cornstarch?
Maybe I just have weird cornstarch but anytime I try to actively scoop out of it, it’s like trying to scoop baking powder.
I use it frequently in coatings for Japanese deep fried foods, usually mixed with flour and salt in particular ratios.
In my other responses, I’ve noted that I don’t bake. In other people’s responses, they’ve noted that there are still a lot of baking recipes out there that don’t require precision.
Precision in baking is massively overstated. The earliest recipes are in parts if you’re lucky. More likely they are mix in these ingredients until it looks right.
Elevation changes everything though and if you don’t adjust the measurements change more.
If you’re at sea level, sure.
Exactly. How is a foot anymore arbitrary then a meter?
Or a cup anymore arbitrary then an ounce?
Imperial measurements were based on arbitrary things, metric has specific scientific definitions for their weights.
1l of water is 1kg at sea level, why the fuck is kings foot size the defacto foot?
What do you mean? A pound is legally defined as 0.45359237 kilograms.
And the kilogram is defined:
These are all currently defined off of the same universal constants, just with different multipliers, which are all arbitrary numbers: 6.62607015 is just about as arbitrary as 0.45359237. Hell, the number 10 is arbitrary, too, so we still use a system for time based on dividing the Earth’s day into 24 and 60.
Like, I get that there’s some elegance in the historical water-based definitions derived from the arbitrary definition of length, but the definition of “meter” started from about as arbitrary a definition as “foot” (and the meter was generally more difficult to derive in the time of its adoption based on the Earth’s dimensions).
If you have to ask that you have no idea how metric works
Until a few years ago, a kilogram was defined by a block of metal.
From 1799 to 1960, the metre was defined by another block of metal. Before 1799, it was defined by a measurement that was hard to verify.
That kind of sounds arbitrary.
We know
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.
Edit: I just looked it up and 1 liter of milk is 1.03 kilos.
Well since we’re nitpicking, a kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight. So unless by “kilo” you meant kilonewton…