I don't agree that any recipe needs that high of a precision that if one used a cup of 250 mL vs. one of 236 mL that a difference will be noticed. Recipes can be altered and often are to individual tastes. Drastic alterations of the recipes will result in a bad end product, but not from using a different sized cup.
If one is using a 250 mL cup instead of a 236 mL one then all the rations increase the same amount. One is not going to have one have a rounding up of one ingredient and a rounding down of another. I think you need to find a recipe book that shows both US or imperial recipes along with SI quantities and see how close the relationships are. Look here at this cake recipe: http://www.dovesfarm-organic.co.uk/cake-recipes.htm Here is a recipe for German Friendship cake in metric using the 250 mL cup and other rounded metric values: http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/cgi-bin/recipe/process?sourdough-cake My point is and will always be that no noticeable change occurs in the outcome of a recipe when you use a 250 mL cup instead of a 236 mL. None what-so-ever!!!! Euric ----- Original Message ----- From: "John S. Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, 2004-02-21 00:05 Subject: [USMA:28837] Re: Kitchen measureing cups > On Friday 20 February 2004 19:22, Chimpsarecute wrote: > > I think you are making more out of this then there is. Isn't it obvious > > that when recipes round off amounts to the nearest quarter cup, a lot of > > the precision is lost anyway? Do you think that if a recipe, which is like > > a formula were calculated, that the amounts would come out in nice rounded > > numbers? They wouldn't. > > No. Some (but not all) recipes require high precision. Cakes in particular > turn out better if the ingredients are measured carefully. Time and > experimentation have led to combinations of ingredients that work well > despite the limitations of measurement by halves, thirds, and quarters. For > example, if one liquid ingredient is rounded up, then another liquid may be > rounded down (like milk and water.) > > In my opinion, this is an advantage of the metric system: You can specify > whatever quantity you need without being restricted to specific arbitrary > sizes like quarter cups. > >
