Comment on Einstein-Landauer culinary units

• Zip2@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What can I say, other than we don’t have an industrial amount of ingredients in our houses and we like accuracy in our recipes.

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  • VoterFrog@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But having industrial quantities is like most of the argument for using metric. You mean to tell me you’re not converting between kL and mL all the time and reaping the benefits of being able to just slide the decimal over? That’s a shame. I’m not sure that doing your everyday cooking in increments of 125g is all that useful then. The cup is sounding better and better.

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    • Zip2@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      By industrial quantities I mean we don’t have a massive sack of flour we can just dip a mug into, or several quarts (wtf) of high fructose corn syrup lying around.

      Plus out cups vary in size from best china tea cup, to sports direct mug.

      You know where are with 500g of flour and 350mls of water.

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    • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      l is lowercase, an kl is not used. A kl is a m³, which water utilities charge by, and pools and interior volume are measured in.

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• BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What I do is my scale is underneath my bowl, every time I need to add a quantity of an ingredient I reset it to zero with what’s in it.

  Though I get that filling a cup and dumping it in seems very practical at first glance, what happen when you need 3/4 of a cup ? Or 1.5 cup ? Do you have 20 cup in the kitchen of different sizes, then you need to grab the one of the correct size which isn’t more practical than having a scale which can do infinite granularity, also I expect you would take the wrong cup on many occasions and get the wrong quantity

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  • VoterFrog@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    We have the same measuring cups I’m sure you use for liquids. They have mL on one side, cups on the other and a scale for sub-sizes. We do have individually-sized scoops which are nice for over-scooping and just sliding your finger across the top to push off the excess and get the amount you need. It’s not strictly necessary though. They come in a set where each smaller scoop fits inside the larger ones in a tight stack that can sit in a drawer.

    The infinite granularity is ultimately unnecessary. Recipes don’t call for 0.397 cups. I’m sure you don’t see any that ask for 438 grams. If you do the math on a lot of recipes listed in both metric and imperial, you’ll find that they’re not even using the exact same amounts. The convenience of using standard measures tends to outweigh the flavor difference with plus or minus a percent of ingredient.

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  • shoo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There’s nothing inherently more natural about cooking in the metric system, people just prefer base 10 these days. People balk at 4 quarts to an arbitrary gallon but love 1 liter being the arbitrary cubic volume of 10 ten-millionths of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole passing through Paris [but not quite].

    Cooking by volume was natural before everyone had accurate kitchen scales. You didn’t have a digital tare button in the 1800s but you did have a bunch of containers in common sizes.

    what happen when you need 3/4 of a cup ? Or 1.5 cup ?

    Generally you have 4 sizes: 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4. You just use a combination of 2 sizes (1+1/2) or multiples of your smallest size (3x1/4).

    You usually don’t need high precision for cooking, common ratios are good approximations (1:1, 1:2, 1:8, etc…). Baking is a different beast and I don’t know how people did it before weight.

    Also, fuck tablespoons and teaspoons. They should just be replaced with 1/16 cup and 1/32 cup.

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    • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      1/16 cup and 1/32 cup.

      To say you’re not taking this seriously would be an understatement. A teaspoon is not half a tablespoon.

      ! Naturally, 1tbsp == 3tsp. Because of course it is. !<

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      • shoo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I know it’s 1/48 cup but that’s a stupid fraction and doesn’t follow any logic, one of the main reasons it should be thrown out

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