Why do Americans measure everything in cups?
Why do Americans measure everything in cups?
Used a couple of US recipes recently and most of the ingredients are in cups, or spoons, not by weight. This is a nightmare to convert. Do Americans not own scales or something? What's the reason for measuring everything by volume?
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Apparently the French sent over a metric system for the Americans to use, but the ship was lost.
I've seen numerous sources for this.
OP is asking about volume vs weight, not metric volume vs imperial volume.
If the US had adopted the metric system it wouldn't matter.
And that still doesn't answer the question.
You do know that metric measures both volume and weight, right? A cubic centimeter of water weighs one gram.
You do know that only water weighs on gram per ml, right?
This is a great fact for if you’re trying to make hot water soup from a recipe written in metric volume measures and you only have a scale.
You might get away if you’re just trying to measure apple juice or something else that’s mostly water, but good luck making Rice Krispie treats
While we’re making soup, let’s base the entire temperature scale on water, too.
You can still list an ingredient using one or the other on a recipe. It may be a simple conversion, but 1:1 is still a conversion.
And one pint of water is one pound.
You've completely missed the point, which is that most of the world measures ingredients (like flour for instance, where one pint is not one pound) by weight and not by volume.
Measuring by weight has only been a thing for cooking since digital scales became cheap.
A pint of water is not one pound, its 1.04318, which is a significant difference.
In what widely-used context is a .04318 difference significant?
Not soup. Not bread.
I don't think even concrete would suffer noticeably from that difference.
Well that's a 4.3% difference. I'd consider 4.3% significant
Canada uses a mixture of imperial and metric, but not weights, so that’s an entirely false conclusion you’ve come to.
And that doesn’t help much, that’s only at sea level and a certain temperature, go do some baking with those exact conversions on a mountain and your cake won’t turn out at all.
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I have a cup that's imperial on one side and metric on the other.
someone should make an alternate history tv show where the ship made it. bonus if it’s of a parody kind.