Why do Americans measure everything in cups?
Why do Americans measure everything in cups?
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?
Apparently the French sent over a metric system for the Americans to use, but the ship was lost.
I've seen numerous sources for this.
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 some other volume measurements we don’t use anymore like “jills”. (If they even bother to specify meaurements.)
"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".
"A handful of this, a sprig of that, a penny weight of some other stuff"
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?
5 rods to the hogs head.
I see someone watches tasting history
My favourite is when the book told him to put on a "good amount" of something
Jiggers. 1.5 oz. Or a pony shot (small end of the jigger) 0.75 oz.
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.
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. Blame the French and British, we got it from them!
I'm currently calorie counting in order to lose weight and I weigh everything in grams because it's easier.
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.
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.
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.
When all of your factory tooling and off the shelf parts are in imperial, you use that. :shrug:
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.
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.
It's OK to use different measurement systems in different contexts. Purity is not a virtue.
8 ounces to a cup, 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon.
And now to commit that to memory for the nth time...and immediately forget it.
"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.
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.
By the way, there's just one size of cups in America?
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.
"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.
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. (Very commonly you also see cups with graduated markings, which are US Imperial on one side and metric on the other, that go up to 2 cups/500mL.)
I've seen "cups" used to mean anywhere between 225ml and 250ml. It's very confusing.
Because it's quicker to just use a measuring cup than by weighing it out every time, I assume.
I do have a scale, but I mostly use it when portioning out a big chub of ground turkey or beef.
Ding ding ding!
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.
We know
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.
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.
I'm amazed they are that uncommon. Here (UK) you can walk into a supermarket and pick them up for less than £20.
"uncommon" is an overstatement, you can get them pretty much anywhere that has pots and pans. It's uncommon in that most people don't bother owning one, not that they're hard to get
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.
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...
Do Americans not own scales or something?
I do not own a kitchen scale. Outside of baking, volume works well enough.
Not with salt or anything granular. Liquid is probably fine
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.
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.
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.
As an American who has recently learned to love his scale, I'm with you 100%. With that being said, no, many Americans do not have kitchen scales.
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.
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.
Shutout to the one dude who downvoted literally every comment lol I hope you enjoyed it
I'm always confused by their insistence to use fluid ounces.
An ounce is fine it's a measurement of mass. But how can you measure liquids by mass, 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.
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.
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.
The metric system uses a similar principle. 1 liter is a kg of water. It's just named better.
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?
I much prefer when they just estimate how many of the particular vegetable I should probably use. A cup of celery? Like 1-2 celeries?
Take a 1-cup measuring cup, chop celery until it's full. That doesn't sound difficult to me. I infer it's merely not what you're used to.
I tend to prefer to weigh ingredients, but I also have measuring cups and spoons and using them is not so onerous. 🤷♂️
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.
Yeah, that's the sort of thing which worries me. I suppose if it's a recipe which doesn't need precise measurements it doesn't matter.
Baking can be troublesome, but it's usually only flour that gets compacted to a problematic degree. Most good recipes will at least specify "sifted". Otherwise, volume works about as well, and the cups and spoons will be standardized measurements with only a dim historical connection to the kind of insanity you may be be picturing.
Mass would probably still be better of course, it's just not quite the literal madness that some think.
General rule when measuring by volume is to not pack it unless the recipe says to.
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, a 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.
For the record I’m an American. I will sometimes ditch a recipe when I see it calls for volumetric measurements.
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?
Although with things like spices, there’s no point in measuring them anyway. Spices are almost always added to taste, so it’s easier to think in terms of ‘x hand movements with the container’.
And yes, I have actually weighed 8oz of water. Well, not specifically 8oz, but I’ve certainly weighed out water to +- a couple grams for a recipe. If a recipe is specific about contents, why would I not measure it out?
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.
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.
Oh my god, rinsing a few dishes. How will you ever recover.
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.
If it calls for 200g of aubergine, then you can weigh that at the shop... It's more convenient at that end, and you can get the right amount.
I'm going to estimate 99% of recipes in the US don't give weights for those. It will say one large onion or 3 medium zucchini. There are a few places (serious eats) that tend to give weights but it's extremely rare. If you're lucky you'll get volumes but weights are so rare.
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
I would agree with this if components were sold by volume as well. I don't really bake, but the only thing I can recall showing a volume was shredded cheese. And even still, it's always about X cups. Otherwise, I'm buying a premixed box and doing what the label tells me to do. Sure, I'm happy to not get fleeced with shrinkflation putting fluffy shredded cheese in a 2 cup bag, but it's still a bit of a mismatch
If you get into baking bread, you buy a scale. It doesn't change the problem with volume vs weight, because American flour is sold in pounds, and the recipes are all in grams or bakers ratios.
What it does help with (in bread baking) is consistently and speed. It's much faster to dump 500g of flour in a bowl than to measure out that many cups.
For almost everything else, cups are faster and easier.
weren't many digital scales out on the prairie when the settlers were looking to make bread
Bah!
Bread is a non measurement baking thing.
It’s more of an art than a science, unlike the rest of fucking baking.
Cooking is supposed to be innovative and spontaneous, not measured down to the last gram!
I may have very strong feelings about baking and its precision needed, except for actual cooking time, that shit is the most important but it’s up in the air, so just keep opening the oven to check it.
I really really hate fucking baking.
the truth is americans kind of just do things arbitrarily.
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."
"merica bad" ok edgelord
shittily
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 gallonsThe 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.
History.
Why do Brits use Stone for weight of people? Same answer.
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.
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.
I do this, and my brother who is an amateur chef thinks it's witchcraft. Baking is not hard to eyeball or make by feel, people.
I'm a trained chef working the trade for 30 years. 2 years in vocational school, a year for cooking and a year for bakery/patisserie. I'm a really confident cook - the concept of different cuisines, the basic ingredients and seasonings, no probs. Baking is still a rocket science for me. My current head chef said baking is fun if you know what you are doing but I'm still after 30 years not fully confident about the consistency.
I do this, and my brother who is an amateur chef thinks it’s witchcraft. Baking is not hard to eyeball or make by feel people.
I can do this no problem however my WIFE cannot. If something doesn't have a recipe defined down to a gnats ass then she looses confidence and nearly always screws it up. She's not dumb she just doesn't have the knack. It's sorta like a "green thumb", some people will kill a plant just looking at it while others are seemingly able to grow palm trees in the Arctic.
I'm sure it's trainable but some people just have the ability and others don't. Different people / different gifts and all that.
Precise measurements are still helpful for learning. When I first started baking bread I had to measure by weight to get 60, 65, or 70% hydration, but at this point I can figure it out by look and feel, at least for the specific flours I'm familiar with.
https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=yduDPjzkXI7G6rJH
This. Explains. It. All.
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.
The units used in the kitchen 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
Except I have cups in my kitchen that are double the size of other cups and I dont know which ones to use.
I think that an american cup holds something like 230 cm3. Thats a horribly small cup for me (mines range from 250 to 450). I tend to use the ones that have 250 cm3 capacity and thats my definition of cup... or i can always use half a metric pint instead.
All this gibberish about units makes me feel like an idiot, so i will confess: i use a scale and metric cups. 250 cm3 water, or milk are roughly 250g
I would guess use the ones that are sized like most other cups. Like standard mug sized. Although i think its all relative. If you use a certain cup to measure flour, use the same cup to measure sugar.
Otherwise you can buy a set of cup and spoon measures for super cheapnon amazon. They fit in my cutlery drawer.
I always try to search either for metric recipes or "tech cards", cus trying to follow imperial recipes is a frigen nightmare. My cup is 300 milliliters, hell if I know what volume cups they use.
This is what they use. Still a horrible way to measure things.
😭😭😭
Measuring cups (special cup and fractional cup sized cups) are pretty convenient.
Although it's worth bearing in mind that a US cup is 240ml, an Imperial (British) cup is 284ml and a metric cup is 250ml.
As an American who was taught to use cups and had recipe books that used cups, I dunno but it's dumb. A cup of peanut butter?! Like no fucking way I'm scooping that shit into a cup then into whatever I'm making. But I did measure just like that before I knew better. I have a food scale and convert cups to a weight and I will never turn back.
Saves you from having to weigh the stuff. U fill the cup and dump.
Doing by weight means u have to take the extra step of weighing it after it's in a container. What a massive waste of time for no advantage.
Doing by weight means u have to take the extra step of weighing it after it's in a container.
Lol no, just weigh it as you pull it from your container. Hell, skip another step and just put your mixing bowl on the scale and zero it out. Weight measurement is so much simpler and accurate than volumetric measurements.
Look, it's like this..
Method 1: you get a bowl and put it on the scale. You then dump everything into it or you get a new bowl for each ingredient if you need to keep them separate.
Method 2: you get a bowl and a cup. You measure into the cup and dump the stuff in the bowl then wash the cup and then you measure the next thing then you wash again and so on.
Sometimes washing isn't needed, sure. But you still put stuff in the cup then move it rather than putting it directly in the bowl.
With spoons it's even worse because for spices, for example, many of them (at least here) come like this so spoons don't fit...so good luck pouring out of it and into a spoon and not making a mess
How do you convert cups to weight accurately when a cup of one thing might weigh more than a cup of a different thing?
Stubborn, i guess
Almost everything sold in USA is measured in metric and imperial units (technically wrong name, US customary units). You can get by with either.
Also, the measuring by volume can be bad for salts, because different types take up different volume amounts. A tale of two salts by Chef John (foodwishes channel on YouTube) has a nice little video about this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XGCY9Cpia_A
No think, grab spoon/cup, dump.
Source: USAian.
Really. But which cup or spoon? I have a shit load of different kind of cups and spoons.
Its not any random spoon or cup. We all have measuring devices of standardized volumes.
for example:
https://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Measuring-10-Piece-Kitchen-Gadgets/dp/B091JXDLDXMeasuring cups or spoons.
Or, so long as you use the same device across a recipe, the proportions will work.
This actually clarifies a lot, I didn't realize there was a misconception that Americans are just using random cups and spoons.
Fun fact : in France we mesure by weight except for the "gâteau au yaourt". The yoghurt cake is the most basic cake with each family having it's own recipe, a bit like maybe muffins in other places and this cake is entierly mesured in volumes.
Cups is a volumetric measurement. Honestly I'd be fine with switching to liters for measurements, or deciliters or whatever makes sense. Gravimetric measurements never made intuitive sense to me.
Perhaps that's because it's what you know best and are used to. Volumetric measurements of anything that doesn't have a fixed density make no sense to me. What the hell is one cup of broccoli? Even a cup of flour can have wildly different ammounts of flour. My least favorite though is butter, how the hell am I supposed to measure out 3 tablespoons of butter? Melt it all on the stove and pour out what I need? I find it incredibly unintuitive.
In the US, sticks of butter have tablespoon measurements printed on the label, like this: https://www.errenskitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/butter-sticks.jpg
Most people leave the sticks of butter in the fridge with the wrappers on. If you want X tablespoons of butter, you cut through the wrapper and butter at the right mark.
I'm not saying it's an ideal system (I also prefer recipes that use weights) but it works.
And the volume of butter changes a lot when melted. If thé recipe dont precise the form, you'll need multiple try juste to know if you recipe actually works.
I'm from the UK but we have a set of cups for old recipes (and American recipes)... Honestly it's easier in a lot of cases to measure stuff out, I like it. What's really annoying is that US and UK cups are DIFFERENT SIZES.
Yes! Ounces and fluid ounces, pints, quarts... Ughhh
God gave us ten fingers for a reason, USE METRIC, PEOPLE
God gave us two hands and 10 fingers. USE DUODECIMAL, PEOPLE
Silly question: are all cups the same volume? I didn’t bother to measure but the cup i use to scoop rice seems very different in size from the one I use for dog food…
A measuring cup is literally designed to be a consistent volume.
Not like a drinking cup or whatever
A rice cup is 3/4 US customary cup.
Nope. I mean technically they are supposed to be. But in practice, absolutely not. Im pretty sure manufacturers just make cups with random lines on it.
This is why I have a dry and a wet measuring cups. Although that still isn't a standard. But at least if you consistently use the same cup for the same thing you can fine tune it that way.
If your cup measurements are not the same you need new measuring cups.
Measuring by volume is fewer steps. You fill it up to the line, done. Much easier than guessing, checking the weight, adjusting etc.
I don't think Americans are the only ones who do it the easier way...
Measuring by weight is great for pros who want to work fast. Most people are not pros.
I kinda feel like in the grand scheme, it doesn't really matter. Sure we could measure by weight, but outside of a few ingredients prone to density variation it gets us by, and really there's just no impetus to change. 🤷
Some good answers here, thanks everyone, I've learnt some stuff today. 🙂
Thanks for actually being interested in the discussion.
Adam ragusea has some good video explaining both why we use volume and why we don't use metric
To anyone who tries watching the first one, just skip ahead to 6:50 where he actually starts explaining his reasoning. I can summarizer them here
- "Volume is visible"
- "You gotta scoop your stuff out with something, so it might as well be by something that measures volume"
The third one was too dumb for me to follow. Something about if you measure stuff by weight, you end up with large portions.
The fourth one was just absurd. No one measures spices by weight... So not being able to measure 1.2g of cinnamon or what not, just isn't a thing.
Alright. I'll stop there. The arguments presented go from fairly bad, to dumb, to made up stuff no one does. The arguments against them are so easy to express:
- "Amounts" of cooking ingredients is mass, so if you want to measure that, you... might as well just measure that, ie weight.
- Amounts that make sense to measure by weight, you measure by weight.
- Spices, and stuff that makes sense to measure by volume, you measure by teaspoon, pinches, or what not. Rarely is the accuracy there all that important, tbh.
https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY?si=ZJ7sKhOdiHxozSUO
Another video that explains stuff on the imperial system that fits.
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.
Most cooking can be done by feel, I dont know why people are dumping on this.
But baking is straight up edible chemistry, people who are more precise always get more consistent results.
I agree with the sentiment: a lot of cooking does not require great precision, so a scale is not often necessary. but I think at that point you should be able to dispense with measuring equipment altogether and just go by feel for most things. A lot of cooking for me is throwing an amount into the pan that feels right, and I don't see a need to measure cups of things.
If I'm baking, accuracy is necessary and I will always reach for the scale.
I guess the point I'm making is that measuring in cups represents a kind of midpoint in the precision-convenience trade-off that I just personally don't find very useful.
I see your point!
I go entirely by feel most of the time and only use cup/spoon measurements as a first step when I'm making batters or cookie or pizza doughs before adjusting based on how the dough is turning out. At that point it's less of a measurement tool and more of a scooping tool to me.
So how do you measure, let's say, chicken breast with a cup?
Chicken just isn't gonna need to be that precise. It's not an ingredient that mixes with others in that way. That being said, chicken is an item that most recipes would mention by weight. Nobody is going to actually weigh out the chicken; they'll just go with a close measurement, or use potentially use the packaging it came in for reference.
Chicken breast is generally measured in "pieces".
If you're measuring a whole chicken breast by weight, what are you going to do if a piece exceeds the weight called for in the recipe? Are you just going to cut off the excess bits? And where would those excess bits go? The bin? The freezer, perhaps, but which recipe would call for "just a sliver of chicken"? Would you rather not just keep that excess weight in and have a bit more chicken in your meal just to avoid all the fuss?
I wouldn't measure chicken at all.
Because we adore being different and difficult just for the hell of it.
Because it’s a few dozen times faster? You can literally reach into a container and take out one cup and that’s it. Works for me ost liquids or grainy stuff. Not from US btw.
Only if you have cup sized cups. Otherwise it's just gonna throw your ratios off
We have measuring cups, along with similarly standardized spoons and liquid measuring cups (same measurement just a different form factor).
Everyone who cooks has at least one set. I literally never had (nor needed) a scale in the kitchen until I started baking, in my forties.
I like using my scale, but it's a cheap PoS and shuts off after 10 seconds of inactivity. I really need to upgrade to a better one.
Everything. "How far to the restaurant?" "18 cups or so"
'The music is too loud, turn it down a few cups!"
I do actually like weight better for measurements, have a scale and that IS easier, agreed. But most recipes don't need to be so exact, and not everyone has a scale so volume measurements work. I just use a regular spoon for teaspoon and have cup measures, a small coffee cup here is 8oz, we have some of those too.
Hehe, not to offend anyone but I think Americans just like crazy units that are either cumbersome, difficult to convert or in this case imprecise as most ingredients vary in density, depending on which flour you chose and how you put it into the cup.
My guess is unwillingness to improve anything and an inability to learn for a subset of people.
I mean weighing things used to be more difficult and required you to move these weights around and was more complicated than just taking a cup of something. But nowadays we have electronic kitchen scales for 10€. And they don't require you to have a set of cups, spoons and get everything messy with butter.
I think the whole baking is quite different and convenience products like pre-made and refrigerated cookie dough or self-raising flour are far more prevalent than where I live. But we also buy lots of pre-made pizza dough and cake mixes here so there is that.
What you don't got a cup
16 tablespoons or 48 teaspoons.
I measure boobs in cups because I'm a savage.
Vandal Savage?
Even as a Canadian and raised on the metric system, I prefer recipes in cups and spoons.
As a Canadian you would have been raised on a hybrid... Food and/or construction stuff has always stayed in imperial measures here
What's troublesome with that is American cups are something like 237ml and a Canadian cup is 250ml, a quart a litre and a gallon 4 litres.
Makes using American recipes a bit finicky. So now I convert recipes to weight. Though I basically never use a scale or measuring cup when actually cooking.
Tradition, and its dumb as hell since we have set the official definition of every "imperial measure" to metric we just keep using the silly ones.
I've been cooking a lot lately. I don't measure anything. I eyeball my most stuff anyway. If I understand the recipe, then I know how much is needed. It takes practice, but it's much easier than weighing or using measuring cups.
Do you really believe that the people who wrote the recipe measured everything to perfection while keeping score of the exact amounts and timing through trial and error? No, they didn't. They made something and then estimated roughly how much they used when writing the recipe afterwards.
The initial recipe that would be true.
But then they use the recipe card and make the dish and realize “oops need more of that” Then they update the card and make sure the recipe is correct.
Because measuring by weight is simply a waste of time. Full cup have exact measure dump. Simple.
Why would you ever add an extra step or two for no reason??
Because measuring by weight is simply a waste of time. Full cup have exact measure dump. Simple.
Possibly the most confidently wrong comment I have read here
I'm amused that my logic is the same but opposite of yours: why the fuck should I scoop and level something to get an "exact measurement", when I could just dump into a container on a scale and get an actual exact measurement.
So you don't have to modify the amount when the recipe called for kosher salt but you only have sea salt. A cup of pasta? Depending on the type you end up with vastly different weight
Assuming you're not trolling, flour has variable density depending on how you scoop or squish it. Packed or unpacked brown sugar?
Just buy cup and spoon measures. It simplifies the whole process. You already own metric measures, so what's the difference.
Edit: What's all this then? Down votes? How is this not the most effective solution? Did it come off as condescending? That was not my intention.
If the issue is that you dont understand the cup and spoon measurements, then just buy a cheap set of measures.
You learn what a cup is. You dont have to translate american recipes every time you want to make something (which doesn't translate to nice round numbers anyway) which saves time and reduces stress and you can still use metric measures for anything else.
If a recipe describes 8 cups of flour, how many grams or kilograms do i need to buy then?
