This will break in other ways; the makeup of a candy bar changes over time as ingredients rise and fall in price.
> And I will say this for the good folks in Hershey, Pa. It’s still the same damned good chocolate, what’s left of it. A replacement of whole by broken almonds 1s the only compromise with quality I’ve noticed, while I shudder to think what the “‘creme”’ inside a Devil Dog is made of these days.
If you say "one bar of butter", "one stick of butter", and "one pat of butter", these can all refer to three different things or the same thing, depending on where you are located. East Coast and West Coast US butter are sold in different size blocks (though both are "8 tbsp") however sometimes you'll find 4tbsp sticks on the west coast that look like 1/2 an East Coast stick that I've heard called pats.
Then Europe comes along and all the fancy European butters are made in 250g blocks, which are bigger than the 110g sticks but smaller than the package of 4 of them! This always confused my European friends when I'd say "oh I'll toss in a stick of butter" because they thought I was adding a quarter kilo of butter.
I can't guarantee that the sticks don't exist anywhere, but I've lived in several cities all over the country and I've never spotted anything like that
I only recently found out that in some places in the US,
they cut them in fours
See also, milk bags.
Our butter isn't wrapped in foil, each stick is wrapped in wax paper and the whole thing is boxed in thin cardboard.
Pack sizes were regulated in 1975 for volume measures (wine, beer, spirits, vinegar, oils, milk, water, and fruit juice) and in 1980 for weights (butter, cheese, salt, sugar, cereals [flour, pasta, rice, prepared cereals], dried fruits and vegetables, coffee, and a number of other things). In 2007, all of that was repealed - and member states were now forbidden from regulating pack sizes!
I think the rationale was that now the unit price (price per unit of measurement) was mandatory to display, consumers would still know which of two different packs on the same shelf was better value. But standard pack sizes don't just provide value-for-money comparisons, as this article shows.
Most butter here (and in a number of other countries) have measuring lines on the pack itself in 50g increments, so while I agree with you it's a nuisance to have an open one to deal with, the measurement part is usually a matter of using a knife along the marked line...
If the "certain brands" you refer to don't have those measuring lines, though, then a pox on them...
It's much easier finding unsalted butter in the US than in Portugal.
In fact, unsalted butter has been the default everywhere I've lived in the US.
Edit: not to mention, say, salted butter being a point of pride for Britany.
There are four 110g sticks per package because each one is one quarter of the classic one pound (454g) package of butter, rounded down.
The European equivalent is a 125g package, which is flatter and wider than your square-profile 110g sticks.
I've typically (only?) seen it on savory recipes though. For cakes and cookies you'd have quantities in grams.
Wat. Never in my life have I seen butter in the (mostly western) US sold in anything other than 1/4 lb sticks. There are long, skinny sticks and short, fat sticks, but they're always 1/4 lb. If you say a "pat" of butter, you're getting roughly a 1/2 Tbsp of butter from me. Definitely not half a stick!
I've not heard "pat" used as a serious unit of volume since childhood though. In fact I rarely hear the word pat in relation to butter at all anymore.
It came in multiple sizes. 5 oz is probably the "small can" mentioned at https://archive.org/details/trinity-parish-of-newton-centre/... .
There was also a 16 oz can, https://archive.org/details/escanaba-daily-press-1964-12-10/... and https://archive.org/details/childrenasconsum0000mcne/page/11... and https://archive.org/details/The_Times_News_Idaho_Newspaper_1... and https://archive.org/details/cupl_004738/mode/2up?q=%22can+of... .
And an 8 pound can (!) for food services. https://archive.org/details/foodloversguidet0000harr_d5o7/pa...
Here in the UK, I get irrationally annoyed by seeing recipes that use "U.S." measurements. A "cup" is mostly meaningless to me as I've got lots of different size cups and as you state, it's not a consistent way to measure most ingredients (I can understand it being used for liquids, but even so why not just use ml or weight). When it comes to measuring larger ingredients (e.g. apricots) then the dimensions of this platonic cup come into play and I have to start deriving the optimal (almost) sphere packing to figure out how many apricots to use.
One British gallon is about 4.5 liters, where a US gallon is about 3.8. Quarts, pints, and cups follow, but fluid ounces are another thing. A US gallon is divided into 128 fl. oz., while a British gallon is 160. This results in a US fluid ounce of about 29.6 ml, vs. 28.4 ml for the British one, and also affects teaspoons and tablespoons.
My kids' baby bottles were labelled with measurements in metric (30 ml increments) and in both US and Imperial fluid ounces. The cans of formula were supplied with scoops for measuring the powder, which were also somewhere close to 2 tablespoons/one fluid ounce (use one scoop per 30 ml of water). There are dire warnings about not varying the concentration from the recommended amount, but I assume that it's not really that precise within 1-2% - more about not varying by 10-20%. My kids seem to have survived, anyway.
Strictly, UK teaspoons are 5 ml and tablespoons 15 ml.
How so?
Old family recipes would just say things like "add flour" and that amount was taught face-to-face and hands-on where you added enough till it looked "right" because onions and eggs etc. were not a uniform size.
Also reminds me of a coworker in a restaurant in Palo Alto who, when I asked him the recipe for a dressing I needed to make, told me "ginger juice, lemon, and just make it good". It turns out there were a few other ingredients.
No "cups" in old British recipes I've made but there will be measures
you have to look up like a "gill".
https://oldbritishrecipes.com/collection-of-old-biscuit-reci...
And yeah, depending on how far back you're going or what sources you're using, there will be a lot of vaguely defined quantities. Glen of Glen and Friends on Youtube regularly cooks vintage recipes and gets into how things evolved over time. Most of his old cookbooks are either Canadian or American but from time to time he cooks from UK cookbooks.
Most of the instances of "cups" come from the "Edwardian recipes" which is a collection of international recipes including American. It includes in the preface a Table of Measures which is what you do for Brits who see "cup" and ask "what the fuck is that?"!
4 cups flour = 1 quart or 1 lb.
2 cups of butter (solid) = 1 lb.
2¹⁄₂ cups powdered sugar = 1 lb.
1 cup = ¹⁄₂ pint
1 glass = ¹⁄₂ pint
1 pint milk or water = 1 lb.
9 large eggs = 1 lb.
1 table-spoon butter = 1 oz.
1 heaping table-spoon butter = 2 ozs.
Butter the size of an egg = 2 ozs.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68137/68137-h/68137-h.htm#Li...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjIwI5Vdmds
British recipes today largely use metric units. Pre-metric recipes absolutely did use cups (although this persisted in Canada and the US more than the UK). As Glen points out none of these British cups were standardized.
Which is probably part of why British recipes never say cup.
I understand that other countries (probably North American ones) use the same system too, so thought I was clarifying, not scaring.
> A US customary cup is, at least, quite standard at 8 fluid ounces. This is more standardized than the unit of measure used in British recipes and whatnot
I disagree as British (or non-U.S.) recipes will use a combination of metric and/or imperial sizes depending on their age. Weighing something in grammes is easy and standardised (for most of the Earth's surface at least). Admittedly, imperial measurements can be problematic as a British pint is different to a U.S. pint and "fluid ounces" also have different definitions.
> 240 mL of apricots is just as useless as 1 cup of apricots
I agree - any sane recipe will use something like "5 apricots". I've never seen mL used for measuring whole fruit - grammes would be appropriate for mashed fruit though.
I disagree as British (or non-U.S.) recipes will use a combination of
metric and/or imperial sizes depending on their age.
any sane recipe will use something like "5 apricots".
At least with something like "5 apricots", it should be obvious to the cook if they've got really small, big or varying sizes. Meanwhile, the "cup" measurement can vary depending on the order of which you put the apricots into the cup - do you put the smallest fruit in first, or the biggest?
For reference a friend who'd expatriated to the midwest posted something about some giant apples they bought. I replied with a picture of an average apple I bought, roughly twice the size of theirs.
Meanwhile, the "cup" measurement can vary depending on the order of which you
put the apricots into the cup - do you put the smallest fruit in first, or
the biggest?
Weighing things out is the correct method. What could be useful is if recipes provided the ratios of the ingredients along with error margins, so that you could easily type in an amount (e.g. 100g flour) and it'd scale the other ingredients to match. However, maybe that's overthinking it.
I do agree it doesn’t make sense for things that aren’t fluid-like.
Yawn.
Except there's no such thing as a "volume measurement":
- The so-called "cups" will have different manufacturing processes, some will be a bit smaller, some will be bit larger. Plastic cups will warp and deform with time.
- When measuring dry materials like flour, the amount in your "cup" depends on your usage. Are you weighing sifted flour or flour out of the bag ? Are you accidentally/deliberately compressing the dry goods when using your cup ? (e.g. are you scooping straight from the bag of flour).
- etc. etc. etc.
It's science, but ya gotta realize you arent baking a sphere in a vacuum ya know?
At least a gram is a gram is a gram everywhere in the world!
Yes, always.
I don't know what its like where you are, but where I am you can get eggs either in mixed packets, or sorted by size.
So where I am, 1 egg != 1 egg unless you weigh it.
It doesn't matter for soufflé's or meringues. But for everything else you'll have problems if you use random sized eggs.
> Do you adjust based on the humidity of the air?
Absorption capability of flour tends to be more important.
> Do you know all of the hot spots in your oven
Put it in fan mode and reduce the temperature. Hot spot problem disappears.
For eggs, as long as you know the right category of egg it'll be within 10% and that's a lot less of a worry.
- The so-called "weight" will differ depending on the type of scale and how it's used. People used mechanical kitchen scales just fine even when some measured a bit less and a bit more
- While digital scales can be more accurate, accuracy can still vary, and of course the reported weight can vary depending on where an object is on the scale or how the scale is set up. (Yes, I've used a scale that wasn't on a smooth flat surface. It worked out fine.)
- "Dry materials" like flour are hygroscopic, and even though weighing is better than measuring by volume, you end up weighing the flour + water, when what you want is just the weight of the flour (e.g. you may have to consider the storage history of your flour)
- There's the ~0.4 % weight difference between the equator and the poles.
Yes, these are all very picky, but that's how your "no such thing as" comes across to someone who grew up using volume measurement in the home kitchen.
Instead, simply say that weight measurement results in more reliable and predictable cooking. Perhaps also add that cleanup can be a lot easier when ingredients don't need intermediate staging.
It’s a game changer and works so much better.
On the other hand, for things that you would always measure (or need to do to sizes changing) like flour or sugar, I want that in grams for easy measuring. Even chocolate bars, might be easier to just say how much you need since getting exactly what you are looking for might be difficult/impossible.
I guess it depends how much you care about perfectly reproducing the exact same dish. For personal cooking I usually don't - a bit of variance is not a negative thing.
Next on my list is converting everything to mass where possible. It’s so much easier to measure with a kitchen scale than it is to wonder “did I pack the X in too tight or too loose into this cup?”.