Cups v grams: why can’t American and British cooks agree

Cups v grams: why can’t American and British cooks agree on food measurements?

I thought this article in the (UK) Guardian newspaper would be of interest.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/a ... asurements

It's certainly a problem.

IIRC the metric cooking measurement system uses volume measure (litres) for fluids but weight* measure (grams) for granular or powdery solids such as ground salt or flour. The US system uses volume (teaspoons, tablespoons, cups) for both of these. Both systems use weight measure for large items of irregular size such as meat and vegetables.

I've seen some cookbook authors advise weighing things that traditionally have been measured in the US by volume. Especially flour, as using weight measure eliminates all the variables that occur when measuring by volume--sifted vs. packed, heaping vs. level, volume differences due to moisture content.

I'm more comfortable with the volume-based system, but I see the advantages of the weight-based system. Unfortunately small scales are hard to find around here.

-Paul W.

* OK, mass measure, if you want to be pedantic.

Unfortunately small scales are hard to find around here.

Try digital kitchen scales at Amazon. Plenty there.

Great thing about these is you can reset to zero when you put bowl on scale, add some ingredient to bowl, reset to zero again and add second ingredient and so on.

Definitely an 'old shoe fits best' kind of problem.

Because Americans are even more resistant to change than the British? We are sticks in the mud.

Because Americans are even more resistant to change than the British? We are sticks in the mud.

Oh, we love the British but we are very prickly about doing anything they do. "Valour" and "aluminium", anyone?

Oh, we love the British but we are very prickly about doing anything they do. "Valour" and "aluminium", anyone?

What’s wrong with valour and aluminium? How else could you spell them,?

I’m all for accuracy as a first principle when offering a recipe for others to use, and for ME that means metric and a scale. if you are sharing you want it To work for others. (What you do in the privacy of your own home is your business. )
There are enough variables already in cooking. Just to be perverse for example an Australian tablespoon is 20 mil go figure.
Jumps off bandwagon now.

[Jenise]

But Paul, with meats and vegetables there is also the other difference between pounds/ounces and grams at deli counters and the like. I guess most Americans don't experience it, but since I shop often in Canada I do. At an Italian deli last week I had to come to my brother's rescue when he was trying to get half a pound of something but the clerk could only deal with kilos and grams. I'm used to it but most Americans are not.

We deal mostly with metric, but in some of my leisure pursuits (cooking and old English cars) I have to keep converting as recipes and workshop manuals have used both systems over the years.

(And I have inch, metric and Whitworth tools....)

Jenise, my point was that at least with meat and vegetables we both use the same type of measure (weight) and so there's a simple one-step mathematical conversion between pounds/ounces and kilos/grams. Not so when you're measuring volume (US) vs. weight (rest of the world). And density plays a role in the conversion. If your US recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of water, that is 44.4 grams of water. But 3 TBS of lard is 40.4 grams.

Thanks to my Biology and Chemistry training I'm pretty comfortable with the metric system and wouldn't have too much trouble at the deli counter. But with food I do think in terms of ounces and pounds and so I'd have to think, "I want one pound of salami" and then do the conversion to kilos. But with a recipe measuring liquids or ground spices I'd just assume they're the same density as water and do the milliliters -> teaspoons conversion. Which, as I pointed out, is wrong when measuring butter or oil, both of which are significantly less dense than water.

As Spike Milligan was wont to say, "It's all rather confusing, really."

-Paul W.

Not so when you're measuring volume (US) vs. weight (rest of the world). And density plays a role in the conversion. If your US recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of water, that is 44.4 grams of water. But 3 TBS of lard is 40.4 grams.

-Paul W.

And to make things even worse, some digital scales (including mine) weigh things in millilitres as well as gm or lb/oz! That only works for pure water at (I think) 4°C,

There's a YouTube video of a chef saying that one of his viewers complained that the chef's recipes didn't work even though he (the viewer) weighed everything to the exact ml.