this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Mildly Interesting
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I hear that people like US recipes because they don't use exact metrics and instead use spoons and cups and those are supposedly easier to scale. In baking I absolutely hate that. Give me metric units. I have no problems scaling those up or down as required. What's a cup? I have .2 liter cups and .4 liter. How the fuck is that supposed to be easier? And what's up with tablespoons of butter? Depending on how much you put on a spoon that can easily mean double/half as much butter. With grams and liters there is no doubt and no second-guessing.
A cup in US Customary is 237 ml (often rounded to 240 ml). Americans don't exist in a world where they have to play "is this cup US Customary or different measure also calling itself a cup measure?" as all their measuring cups are going to be in US Customary. Butter usually comes in quarter pound sticks with teaspoon (4.9 ml) and tablespoon (14.8 ml) measures printed on the wrapper so you can just cut a hunk of the appropriate volume from the stick and if you were using a measuring spoon to measure butter you'd use a level measure to create consistency and not just let it heap up.
Note: I prefer weighing ingredients and in metric at that. I'm just answering your questions.
Cool, thank you! How much would be a tablespoon of butter in grams? Like 25g or 50g?
1 tablespoon of butter is ~14 g. For a more complete conversion (with respect to butter): 1 stick = 0.5 cup = 8 tablespoons = 24 teaspoons = 113 g.
Thank you again!
You're welcome. A nice resource for a bunch of other ingredients for baking is this one from King Arthur Flour.
Weighing ingredients is so much better. I can cook significantly faster when I don't have to measure volumetrically, plus recipes scale so much more easily. If I want to make 3.134 of a recipe, weight is the way to go.
Oh, I agree. If I use a recipe regularly I'll often convert it or if I'm creating one from scratch I'll usually just have everything by weight from get go.
P.S. Nothing makes me annoyed at a recipe faster than seeing something like 2.5 cups of chopped broccoli.