Why do Americans use volumes instead of mass for baking/cooking?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We aren't talking about liquids, of course.

But it makes absolutely zero sense to use volumes for measurements when cooking or baking. Tsp of salt? Cup of flour? Tsp of baking powder, etc? What in the bloody hell? I'll never understand why Americans love to cook ass backwards and don't use MASS while cooking or baking. It makes infinitely more sense to use GRAMS of flour, salt, etc. while baking/cooking like the rest of the world does. Why is it so ingrained to use asinine measurements in US kitchens?

Does the food taste good in your mouth? Then who cares how it's measured

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Here you go. Despite the hostile OP I will share this because I love it so much:
https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-system-S9nYOfZ

Thanks for sharing. I'm a physicist, but I've often argued that for day-to-day use English units are more intuitive. A foot is on order of the length of a person's foot. Hot outside in Fahrenheit is ~100 degrees, and cold outside is ~0 degrees...way more intuitive than 40 and -18.

Yes, thank you for reading it. I agree- it's the intuition, the divisibility and the calculating in your head (medieval peasants didn't have iphones or home scales!) that are key. And also, KICKER, for baking when humidity and other things are factors, the exact grams matters diddly squat. Anyone ever make pate a choux and you have to add eggs until "it's right". Those are the real bakers. People who need their grams of flour can bow right out and stop accusing us of "crappy cakes".

lol! No you use a recipe and the eggs are measured in ml. For 2 kg 500g of pate a choux or approximately 70-100 profiteroles or 60 eclairs it is 960 ml of eggs with the same amount of water. The recipe is 225 g cake flour, 310 g bread flour, 960 ml water, 340 g unsalted butter, 7.5 g salt, 960 ml eggs and 3.5 g ammonium carbonate. No “it feels right”. Professional bakers use scales and measure liquid ingredients precisely. There is no guess work in baking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Here you go. Despite the hostile OP I will share this because I love it so much:
https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-system-S9nYOfZ

This is fantastic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All recipe creators (including American ones) use weighed out ingredients when developing recipes bc it's so much more precise. For the US market they then convert back to volume based measurements.

Weighing and baking is a way better system and even Americans are speaking out in favor of it, eg. Alison Roman on one of her videos.

But it doesn’t make sense to convert back to volumes. Just leave it as mass. Yes, it is way more precise. It makes zero sense to ever use volumes to measure out solids. I worked as a chemist for years.

NP. It does if you're writing for an audience that doesn't have scales. Your experience as a chemist is totally beside the point. Most Americans don't have kitchen scales, and volume measurements are fine for the vast majority of home cooking projects, even baking. Mass is more precise, but does a cake recipe written in cups work? Of course it does, you can tell because Americans successfully make cakes every day.

DP. If you want consistent results you use a scale. People are always mystified why sometime their chocolate chip cookies are runny, cake like or somewhere in between or their cake is not baked well. It’s because you use volume and not mass for measuring. A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from around four ounces (113 grams) to six ounces (170 grams), a difference of 50%. A stick of butter does not weight four oz. Most weight about 3 7/8 oz or less. This does not matter in cooking but baking it does because of the chemical reactions.

If you are a serious baker you have a scale and your recipes are all in weight not volume. If a baking book or recipe does not list ingredients by weight it is not serious. Scale cost like $20 on Amazon.

The other thing is cooking to an internal temperature not cooking at x temp for x long.

+1000

So many ignorant Americans have no concept of a simple physical property like density. No one uses volume to measure solids out in science. It's always mass. Because density. There can be wide variance in food products in terms of amount of food stuff per fixed volume across different manufacturers because of the different ways they produce the product. The only way to be sure is to use mass.

[Anonymous]

Because https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=zJp-clYeKofCxlAh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Bring ignorant to science is why America uses stupid volumes for measurements rather than mass.

sure. If you think of countries that have contributed nothing to science, America certainly comes to mind

US science uses the metric system, lol.

But the general public in the US is ignorant of science. It's not even questionable. That's why they do stupid things like using volumes to measure out solids for cooking.

Wow, you are really doubling down on being an a$$ aren’t you. All US citizens in the general population are ignorant of science, huh?

[Anonymous]

I think it’s because if you give Americans a weight in ounces, they easily get confused and reach for a liquid measuring cup for fluid ounces. And honestly, it IS confusing. Whereas if you’re in metric, the difference between mass and volume is more apparent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Here you go. Despite the hostile OP I will share this because I love it so much:
https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-system-S9nYOfZ

What a dumb post setup with a whole bunch of strawmen.

Omg, a 3rd of a cup is 68.3333 grams!!! Dumb. Because anyone making a recipe using mass wouldn't use 68.333 grams in the first place, the recipe would be invented to optimize ratios and would use 65 grams, 68 grams, or 70 grams. Working with base 10 is infinitely easier. The poster is fixated in decimals. Lol, if that matters to you, you wouldn't use grams of you're concerned about .035 grams, you'd just use milligrams instead. Or if you have decimals of liters, you'd use milliliters. It's really not that hard as that poster makes you want to believe. They're just trying to setup ridiculously stupid scenarios to support a weak argument when they completely ignore simply using a different metric unit of base 10.

Oh you, need 6.036 grams of flour? Not hard, weigh 6 grams and 36 milligrams of flour. Lol. Takes 10 seconds to do.

So many stupid Americans ignorant of science and basic measurements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Bring ignorant to science is why America uses stupid volumes for measurements rather than mass.

sure. If you think of countries that have contributed nothing to science, America certainly comes to mind

US science uses the metric system, lol.

But the general public in the US is ignorant of science. It's not even questionable. That's why they do stupid things like using volumes to measure out solids for cooking.

Wow, you are really doubling down on being an a$$ aren’t you. All US citizens in the general population are ignorant of science, huh?

Have you seen your average Joe walking into the street? They're dumb as hell and know very little science. I mean, just look what the idiots in the American public think about the COVID vaccines.

Imagine how mind blown they must be simply trying to figure out basic concepts like grams vs milligrams and decimals, lol. But omg, the foot is divisible by 12, 6, 3 and 4....lol. Now try working with logarithms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Here you go. Despite the hostile OP I will share this because I love it so much:
https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-system-S9nYOfZ

What a dumb post setup with a whole bunch of strawmen.

Omg, a 3rd of a cup is 68.3333 grams!!! Dumb. Because anyone making a recipe using mass wouldn't use 68.333 grams in the first place, the recipe would be invented to optimize ratios and would use 65 grams, 68 grams, or 70 grams. Working with base 10 is infinitely easier. The poster is fixated in decimals. Lol, if that matters to you, you wouldn't use grams of you're concerned about .035 grams, you'd just use milligrams instead. Or if you have decimals of liters, you'd use milliliters. It's really not that hard as that poster makes you want to believe. They're just trying to setup ridiculously stupid scenarios to support a weak argument when they completely ignore simply using a different metric unit of base 10.

Oh you, need 6.036 grams of flour? Not hard, weigh 6 grams and 36 milligrams of flour. Lol. Takes 10 seconds to do.

So many stupid Americans ignorant of science and basic measurements.

If you can't accept the many good explanations given here, then just know it's because the US was founded on the idea of not doing anything the way you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Here you go. Despite the hostile OP I will share this because I love it so much:
https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-system-S9nYOfZ

What a dumb post setup with a whole bunch of strawmen.

Omg, a 3rd of a cup is 68.3333 grams!!! Dumb. Because anyone making a recipe using mass wouldn't use 68.333 grams in the first place, the recipe would be invented to optimize ratios and would use 65 grams, 68 grams, or 70 grams. Working with base 10 is infinitely easier. The poster is fixated in decimals. Lol, if that matters to you, you wouldn't use grams of you're concerned about .035 grams, you'd just use milligrams instead. Or if you have decimals of liters, you'd use milliliters. It's really not that hard as that poster makes you want to believe. They're just trying to setup ridiculously stupid scenarios to support a weak argument when they completely ignore simply using a different metric unit of base 10.

Oh you, need 6.036 grams of flour? Not hard, weigh 6 grams and 36 milligrams of flour. Lol. Takes 10 seconds to do.

So many stupid Americans ignorant of science and basic measurements.

If you can't accept the many good explanations given here, then just know it's because the US was founded on the idea of not doing anything the way you do.

What good explanations? There hasn't been any.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We aren't talking about liquids, of course.

But it makes absolutely zero sense to use volumes for measurements when cooking or baking. Tsp of salt? Cup of flour? Tsp of baking powder, etc? What in the bloody hell? I'll never understand why Americans love to cook ass backwards and don't use MASS while cooking or baking. It makes infinitely more sense to use GRAMS of flour, salt, etc. while baking/cooking like the rest of the world does. Why is it so ingrained to use asinine measurements in US kitchens?

Does the food taste good in your mouth? Then who cares how it's measured

No. If you’re using a recipe that goes by volume, it tastes like garbage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might get a more insightful response if you weren’t so hostile about it. I’m sure there is a historical reason for this if you really want to know.

Here you go. Despite the hostile OP I will share this because I love it so much:
https://imgur.com/gallery/imperial-system-S9nYOfZ

What a dumb post setup with a whole bunch of strawmen.

Omg, a 3rd of a cup is 68.3333 grams!!! Dumb. Because anyone making a recipe using mass wouldn't use 68.333 grams in the first place, the recipe would be invented to optimize ratios and would use 65 grams, 68 grams, or 70 grams. Working with base 10 is infinitely easier. The poster is fixated in decimals. Lol, if that matters to you, you wouldn't use grams of you're concerned about .035 grams, you'd just use milligrams instead. Or if you have decimals of liters, you'd use milliliters. It's really not that hard as that poster makes you want to believe. They're just trying to setup ridiculously stupid scenarios to support a weak argument when they completely ignore simply using a different metric unit of base 10.

Oh you, need 6.036 grams of flour? Not hard, weigh 6 grams and 36 milligrams of flour. Lol. Takes 10 seconds to do.

So many stupid Americans ignorant of science and basic measurements.

If you can't accept the many good explanations given here, then just know it's because the US was founded on the idea of not doing anything the way you do.

What good explanations? There hasn't been any.

This from a country that measures body weight in "stones"? GTFO.

[Anonymous]

Americans understand the concepts of density and arithmetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back to the UK and your hybrid systems of weights and measures. You guys need to pick one or the other and until then quit complaining about the choices others make.

Yeah why do you say "stone" for losing or gaining weight? That's pretty stupid in my opinion!

It's important to have a quick and reliable estimate of how much post apocalyptic weaponry you need to take out a zombie.