Comment

Comment on Why do Americans measure everything in cups?

Milk has a specific gravity slightly higher than 1, so that isn’t accurate.

In this context milk is a bad example because the difference between 1.03g/ml and 1g/ml is negligible in a kitchen. Even oil (0.92g/ml) is close enough.

This matters the most for stuff like below (with 1cup = 240ml):

honey: 340g/cup = 1.4g/ml
sugar: 200g/cup = 0.85g/ml [varies depending on granularity]
flour: 120g/cup = 0.5g/ml [sieved, and “properly” measured. It’s a PITA to measure it by volume.]

Also, “cups” and “feet” aren’t arbitrary.

All units are arbitrary, be them metric or esoteric.

source

Sort:hotnew top

HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

In this context milk is a bad example because the difference between 1.03g/ml and 1g/ml is negligible in a kitchen. Even oil (0.92g/ml) is close enough.

The context is that if you are going to hand wave away a 3% difference in a quantity, then having to weigh everything probably isn’t important.

source
- lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  The context [SIC - rationale] is that if you are going to hand wave away a 3% difference in a quantity, then having to weigh everything probably isn’t important.
  
  That’s poor reasoning; ignoring a tiny difference doesn’t imply ignoring larger ones. Myself mentioned three cases where the difference matters, with one (flour) being highly variable.
  
  A better argument to defend your point would be that most differences in the kitchen are tiny.
  
  source
  - HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve been making that argument in other comments. If I had to argue the nuances of this argument in every comment, I’d be copying and pasting pages long comments that no one would read.
    
    source