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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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