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?

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    9 months 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 some other volume measurements we don’t use anymore like “jills”. (If they even bother to specify meaurements.)

    • IndiBrony@lemmy.world
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      9 months 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”.

    • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months 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?

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      9 months 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.