Sonia Murray at [EMAIL PROTECTED],Internet writes:
>What are the measurements used in Canada for recipes?
>
>Cups & spoonfuls? Pounds and ounces (US or Imperial)? grams and liters?
>Others?
As usual, it depends what you're referring to.
Officially, we in Canada are on the metric system, but it was
decided to continue using recipe measurements by volume
rather than weight --which means most things are supposed
to be measured in liters and milliliters for domestic purposes.
In practice, of course, we did not all throw away all our
cookware (let alone longstanding habits) and so many of us
do still measure in cups and tablespoons, pints and quarts
(Imperial, not U.S.), etc. Many published recipes provide
both types of measures: typically, for example, the local
store fliers uses Imperial mesures in their English
versions although they use metric volumes in the French.
Just to complicate matters, professional bakers and many
chefs work by weight, not volume. However, in such cases
it is almost always in metric units. Meanwhile, the
non-professional serious baker's usual measure is the pound
(1 lb flour, 1/2 lb butter) for dry measures and the cup
for liquids since most recipes before the 1960s were written
that way.
If what you're working on involves recipes for use in the
home and you actually want people to use the recipes, it's
probably a good idea to use metric units and provide
English measures in parentheses: e.g., 500 ml (2 cups)
[Yes, the English liquid and dry measuring cups are slightly
different sizes but the difference is too small to matter and
most households will use one or the other.]
We tend not to use pints and quarts anymore since milk and
wine come in liters now, and we never did use gills much.
On the other hand, even the most dedicated of metric cooks
is likely to translate "5 ml" into the more convenient
teaspoon rather than fuss with a graduated test-tube.
Another unhelpful answer due to lack of context. As a
general policy, many cookbooks provide the measurements
in one system or the other, depending on where they're
planning to sell the book; most will at least provide a
table of equivalents in the book so people can work out
what that means in the system they're comfortable with.
Regards,
Judyth
