Does your consideration of the posting by Joan Pontius as reliable evidence imply agreement with her conclusion that the metric system makes life harder and less practical?
In fact, required measurement accuracy depends on what is being prepared, not who is preparing it. I think most people with any appreciable cooking experience intuitively understand this. I can't speak for other amateurs, but as a counter example of your claim, I seldom measure anything at all for the large majority of routine meal preparation, with a few exceptions like time and temperature for roasting meats. On the other hand, I have little doubt that professional bakers and pastry chefs carefully measure ingredients for breads, cakes, and pastries. I've pointed out before that changing the definition of a unit only affects future references made with the new definition in place, e.g., existing references to avoirdupois pounds will still be avoirdupois, not 5 dg. Also, defining a pound to 500 g, an inch to 25 mm, gallon to 4 L, etc. doesn't make pounds, inches, or gallons metric. In fact, these are all already defined in terms of SI units. John On Sunday 21 March 2004 12:22, Chimpsarecute wrote: > See my posting from Joan Pontius. It seems that Belgium kitchens also use > cups and spoons. But there is no exact definition of either, so the cook > uses what is available in the cupboard or drawer. Yet, despite centuries > of this inexact form of cooking, the issue does not seem to present a > problem If it did, there would be a lot of bad tasting food ending up on > people's dinner tables. > > Only here do we cringe at the implications of what may happen if the amount > of one ingredient changes by whatever percent and the others don't. It > seems cooks and chefs must loosely follow the recipes and take many a > liberty with the amount of ingredients added. And I'm sure if asked, many > a chef or cook will tell you they experiment with the recipes and alter > ratios to their particular tastes and those of the people who eat what they > produce. > > I'm sure your Australia professional cooks know enough about cooking to > know where to take liberties and where not to. And I doubt very few care > if a cup is 220 mL or 250 mL or a spoon us 15 mL or 20 mL. Somehow they > know what they are doing. It is the amateurs that worry about the > exactness of quantities. > > Euric > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Pat Naughtin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Euric Mighty Chimp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "U.S. Metric > Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Sunday, 2004-03-21 14:58 > Subject: Re: [USMA:29259] Re: 500 g pound > > > Dear All, > > The issue of 500 gram metric pounds is a little more complex than simply > changing the definition of the word pound. > > Since the proposed metric pound is a little over 10 % more than the old > imperial pound, then it is appropriate to revise the use of the word pound > in every place that it occurs and to fully consider the implications of the > change. > > For example, say you have an old recipe that calls for a pound of flour, > would a pint (568 millilitres) of milk be adequate for your recipe or would > you need 600 mL (+ 6 %) or 625 mL (+ 10 %); would a 20 mL tablespoon be > better than a 15 mL tablespoon? And you need to consider this question for > each and every one of the ingredients in all of millions upon millions of > possible kitchen recipes! > > If you don't consider these issues you are subjecting several generations > of cooks to measurement madness in their kitchens. > > In addition, all industrial recipes need the same thought and consideration > with many millions more possible applications. > > We were fortunate in Australia to have had a wise group of professional > cooks, who made the rounding decisions for us that made all of our recipes > -- both old and new -- compatible enough to be practical in any working > kitchen. I think of it as a masterpiece of metrication in an extremely > complex situation. > > As I said, this is a little more complex than simply changing the > definition of the word pound. > > Cheers, > > Pat Naughtin LCAMS > Geelong, Australia
