Marcus, It's funny how two people doing the same thing have such different experiences. I just looked through all 9 of our European cookbooks (6 French, 3 British.) Not a single one specifies spices by weight. Most use teaspoons, tablespoons, coffee spoons, or soup spoons, although a few specify pinches or ml. I believe the various spoons are defined as 5 or 15 ml.
What country is your cookbook from that gives spices by the gram? I concede that cooking by weight can only work as well as your scales. I won't claim my cheap electronic scales are particularly accurate, but several times I've done the experiment of weighing the same thing several times. Up to about 800 g, it varies over a range of 4 g at the most, usually not more than 2. Above that, it varies over a range of 5 g. I think the smallest thing I ever had to weigh was 15 g of butter, which worked fine. It makes no difference how I dump the ingredients into the bowl. My wife, who grew up cooking by weight but has also cooked many American recipes by volume, swears that cooking by weight is easier. She says some things in Europe come in packets of a specific size. So, for example, a recipe may call for a 10 g packet of yeast. You wouldn't really weigh the yeast, you just dump in the packet. But since here in America she couldn't buy the same size packet, she had to weigh it. Thus, the smallest thing she ever had to weigh was 10 g of yeast. If you want to measure dry ingredients by volume, how would you do it? If a recipe called for 140 g of some ingredient, and gave the equivalent volume as 180 ml, what would you do? John On Sunday 28 September 2003 18:39, Ma Be wrote: > Good post. But let's take a closer look. > > On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 20:56:51 > > John S. Ward wrote: > >Hi Marcus, > > > >I somewhat disagree. The error in calibration of electronic scales is > >probably a lot less than the uncertainty of how an ingredient was chopped > > or packed or sifted. > > Hmm... I see your point. True, if you're using ingredients that are... > "chunky", that would pose a problem indeed. Granted. > > However, not all ingredients are of that nature. Therefore, perhaps we > should use a combination of approaches as opposed to focus on ONE method > only. > > > I doubt if it's necessary to calibrated a decent > >electronic scale unless you have some specific need (e.g., like if you > > write cookbooks!) > > But unfortunately, my friend, one does! What I mean is that before you > start measuring you may have to make sure that NOTHING is upsetting that > scale. As my experiment indicated, it seems that it is critical HOW you > place some ingredients there. > > For instance, I noticed that if I'm... "gentle" in placing ingredients my > scale will have a tendency to overestimate the ingredient volumewise, i.e. > I'll end up getting MORE. > > > Small amounts (spices, etc.) *are* measured by volume using > >calibrated spoons, so accuracy at the gram level is not needed. > > That was my point. When it comes to spices I believe it would be more > accurate to use volume. But if you check European recipe books, you'll > notice that EVEN these are measured by mass. > > >It makes a big difference how much flour fills a measuring cup depending > > on how well sifted the flour is. > > ? On this one I beg to differ. I notice no appreciable difference on > volume measurements when I place that flour on the volumetric container. > I've been using volumes for cooking of my breads and they NEVER come out > any differently. > > In other words the amount of 'sitting in' due to "sifting effects", I > found, is negligeable. > > >I believe that measuring by weight is often easier than measuring by > > volume. I just keep hitting the "tare" button between each ingredient. I > > weigh them directly into the pot or mixing bowl that I would use for > > cooking anyway. So I don't have to get out the measuring cups, or wash > > them. > > That's perhaps somewhat subjective. I find no hassle with using volumetric > containers. But I do have difficulties when trying to get accurate > measurements with scales in those two situations I described. > > Therefore, in conclusion, in light of what you wrote, it may be the case > that the best approach would be for us to use a combination of methods > here. > > But then again, quite a few 'North American' recipes DO use this approach > (both mass and volume). > > Marcus > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! > Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
