Spanish speaker has different al dente preference?

We do. We tend to overcook pasta.

I'm surprised to learn that the English don't.

To this day, living in US for 8 years, I have to stop and think if I need to translate minutes and seconds to American.

There's a handy rule of thumb for this: is the number of seconds per minute (60 aka 2*2*3*5) a weird, random-sounding number that's way too easy to make clean subdivisions out of[0], rather than a nice, math-hostile power of ten? Then it's probably already in American units, unless it's British.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number

Robespierre wanted to saddle us with metric time too, you know.

The 60 is from Sumer.

It's in the context of:

> I have to stop and think if I need to translate [] to American.

and I assume (reasonably though not certainly) that the commentor is not Sumerian.

I've got a pack of rice that says put in X amount of water and cook until dry in danish, in swedish it says put in 2*X amount of water, cook Y minutes and strain the rice. Double confusion, why different instructions and who strains water from the rice

It's an official recommendation in Sweden due to arsenic content of rice.

https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/en/food-and-content/oonskade...

Thanks for the revelation of the mystery

For food to be kept in the refrigerator Danish, Swedish, and Finnish instructions differ by 1 degree centigrade each. Don't remember the values from the top of my head, something like 8, 7, 6 respectively.

Atmospheric pressure? Water hardness?

Go figure.

The English speakers will overcook it anyway.

After careful double blind studies, it was determined that if you directed impatient spaniards to cook for 10-12 minutes, they cooked it for 8-10 minutes?

This translation really is weird! :-D

Many cities in Mexico are at relatively high altitudw (but probably not high enough to make a difference...).

Because spanish people like their pasta mushy and overcooked (true story)

Probably a cut and paste job from another style of pasta they offer, and the intern was asked to just change the pasta name and cooking times...