Why do Americans use volumes instead of mass for baking/cooking?
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Anonymous
Why are you fixated on the UK. Virtually the rest of the entire developed world uses mass too in cooking. Are you really this dense? |
Anonymous
36mg out of 6.036g represents an error of 0.05%. There is no recipe in the world that sensitive. Measuring beyond three significant figures is usually meaningless in the physical word. That's why it doesn't matter. |
Anonymous
| I think most Americans who bake do use grams or ounces instead of cups. I know I do. But also, when baking bread for instance, there is more to the feel than an exact measurement. It depends on the humidity, altitude, etc. that you're working in. So even if I'm measuring with grams, I still have to adjust. |
Anonymous
You're proving the point of why mass is better. Yes, it does matter whatsoever if you're off by .001 mg. A PP was trying to use a stupid internet post to support the concept that volumes for solids make sense because of an asinine argument that imperial units are divisible by 12. The post went on to argue that decimals are bad when using mass, because what if you end up needing to measure something like 68.333.... grams!!??? It really wouldn't matter if you could only measure out thousandth digit when using mass. The reason mass is far superior is because it automatically accounts for density. As a other poster mentioned, different brands of food stuffs can have wide variances in their products in consistency. 1 cup of flour from brand X may be 150g while 1 cup of flour from brand Y may be as divergent as 170 grams. This matters tremendously to cooking, because you're adding in hugely variable amounts of total gluten. If you simply used mass you'd be getting the correct amount of flour across all brands. Different brands may differ simply because physical properties are different in their food stuffs due to the way try manufacturer a product. Product X may simply be 'fluffier' than product Y's. X will give you less of the ingredient per volume because it simply has more empty space per volume than Y. Use mass. |
Anonymous
^ typo - meant to say 'yes, it doesn't matter..' |
Anonymous
You are making the wrong argument. I agree that different flours can have different densities. It's like that they would absorb different amounts of water as well. So, it really doesn't matter how precisely you measure things, by weight or volume. Note, I can't use the word mass in good faith if you are using a scale. That's the reason measurements don't really need to be very precise, because the raw ingredients vary considerably anyway. |
Anonymous
Well I like this answer. Does that factor in that the brain needs to be scrambled or just how much "stone" you need to hit them with to knock them over? |
Anonymous
| Most people here don’t have a food scale, that’s why. |
Anonymous
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The few things that I bake are old family recipes. The kind that someone already tried to convert from “pinches” of this, “dabs” of that, and “season to taste” — to the closest standard measurements that they could come up with. The kind that get altered a bit if the flour and butter that I’m using is not quite the same as the flour or butter that my great grandmother used a hundred years ago. I don’t own a scale, but if I did, there would be no advantages that would come with using it.
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Anonymous
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Let's suppose I am doing fine baking (for most other things it DOES NOT MATTER). Say I use a scale (hey, in a lot of cases I don't bother with a measuring cup either). Ok, the flour or sugar or whatever is going to have a different percentage of actual, you know, flour (or sugar) depending on humidity, no? So it the exactness is that big a deal how is this an advantage? I should probably check the elevation as well, because, you know. And the barometric pressure. And calibrate the oven temp. Probably keep a temp probe in the ingredients as well. Like what a chemist does. And if a souffle maybe I should have a seismometer, or have someone posted along the train tracks a few blocks from me to stop the engines.
Generally speaking, 2 c of sugar is a pound. 2 c of water or milk is a pound. 2 c of butter is a pound. Am I going to weigh 1/2 tsp salt? Hell no. I have a very small kitchen so every utensil has to be assigned a location and be justified. (I used to have a small spring scale for postage. Got damaged or lost somehow, I forget. I was fond of it and have never been able to convince myself to buy a digital so I use the 5 sheets of paper for an ounce rule or weigh at the PO, which is close by anyway. |
Anonymous
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In 18th century England, and long before, they use poundstones to weigh butter.
They were actually fossilized sea urchins, rather pretty because of the patterns, and uniform enough that people were happy. (They also played a significant role in figuring out geological layers). |
Anonymous
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Well, what about eggs?
The high end of the size range of a large egg as defined by the USDA is 12.5% more than the low end. Plus eggs can lose moisture. So if you flour tolerance is, idk, 1 gram +/- that darn egg is going to throw off the entire cooking enterprise if you ask me. |
Anonymous
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I use mass because it’s easier, not because I’m worried about being super precise. It’s easier to measure dry ingredients straight into a bowl, and it’s much easier to double/halve/whatever in grams.
Flour is the only thing where I think it could really matter, because flour really does compact so much and so easily. |
Anonymous
Not true! I was in Salisbury and all the food was amazing. I disagree with the op though. |
Anonymous
Then go buy one for $15. |