Found this on the Gaylea site:
* Ginger Lime Butter - great over grilled fish. Combine 1/4 cup (50 mL)
Gay Lea Spreadable Butter with 1 tablespoon ( 15 mL) grated fresh gingerroot, 1
clove garlic, minced, 1 tablespoon (15 mL) lime juice and pinch red pepper
flakes.
* Maple Butter - great over toast, scones, pancakes, waffles Combine
1/4 cup (50 mL) Gay Lea spreadable butter with 2 tbsp (25 mL) maple syrup and a
pinch of cinnamon
I find it funny that one tablespoon is 15 mL and two are 25 mL and not 30 ml.
Also note that use a cup to mean 200 mL as they show a quarter cup as 50 mL.
I now would wonder which is the intended amounts or if it makes a difference.
So much for NIST official definitions if this recipe made it into the US.
Jerry
________________________________
From: John Frewen-Lord <[email protected]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, April 5, 2009 8:20:26 AM
Subject: [USMA:44372] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
In Canada, butter is packed in hard metric sizes (250 g, 500 g, etc), but is
not called a pound. There a pound is still 454 g.
In the 30 years I lived there, I don't ever recall coming across a 'stick' of
butter - that must be a unique US term.
John F-L
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremiah MacGregor
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 12:02 AM
Subject: [USMA:44347] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
I don't see a need to preserve recipes in English form once they have been
converted to metric. The fact that the recipe is preserved in some form then
the history is not lost. Anyway which version of pre-metric measures do you
want to preserve?
When you say a stick of butter is 0.25 lb, what about in places where the pound
is 500 g? What about historically where the pound was not 454 g? In places
where the pound is 500 g, then each quarter is 125 g. Doesn't Canada use 500 g
pounds for butter? If so, then how would that affect the use of sticks of
butter in American recipes?
If the butter is not exactly a pound and each stick is not precisely 0.25 lb,
then to state to a precision of 113.4 g is incorrect. There seems to be too
much granting of precision where precision doesn't practically exist. Those
official definitions are ignored in the real world.
Unless we can show that each stick is cut exactly the same, then I don't see
the need to express the mass of a stick of butter to the decigram level. Even
you state the volume of the butter is not precise and give an amount of 8.3~8.5
tablespoons (=15 mL) or 124.5 mL to 127.5 mL. If I use the average of 126 mL.
If I use 113 g for the stick mass, and divide it 126 mL, I will get a more
practical 900 g/mL. A much easier number to remember and deal with.
Jerry
________________________________
From: John M. Steele <[email protected]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, April 4, 2009 2:35:52 PM
Subject: [USMA:44341] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
Yes, it does say something about isolationism.
However, recipes represent history, the past. Quite apart from the argument of
whether we should continue to use the old terms, we should document them, so we
don't lose track of the past.
A "stick" of butter is 0.25 lb, therefore about 113.4 g. The pound of butter
is divided into 4 sticks, each wrapped in waxed paper. As US cooking is
volumetric, not weight based, the wrapper is marked in tablespoons and
teaspoons, so a smaller unit can be cut off using the wrapper as a ruler. The
stick is slightly longer than the 8 tablespoons marked off, perhaps 8.3 - 8.5
tablespoons. Thus, the density of US butter is approximately 113.6 g/124.2 mL
= 0.915 g/cm³, with a bit of conversion.
If you Google the term "stick of butter" you will find this definition,
although it may be a problem in the dictionary. There are a number of terms in
British cooking that I don't understand either, and a number of vegetables have
different names.
--- On Sat, 4/4/09, Martin Vlietstra <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Martin Vlietstra <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [USMA:44329] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
To: [email protected], "'U.S. Metric Association'" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009, 12:40 PM
John,
My father was Dutch and my mother British.. One of their wedding presents was
a Dutch cookery book – measurements in metric units of course. The statement
“100 g zuiker” can easily be translated to “100 g sugar” and is totally
unambiguous. All that is needed is a tourist’s phrase book to look up
“zuiker”. The phrase book could have been from either a Dutch publishing house
or a British publishing house.
A number of American recipes have the term “a stick of butter”. As a Brit,
that is a meaningless concept to me. I checked in my copy of the “Oxford
Concise Dictionary” what was meant by “a stick”. The dictionary gave 16
different meanings for the word “stick” spread over nearly an entire page, but
none of them could enlightened me. Similarly with Chamber’s dictionary.
Doesn’t this say something about the isolationism that is cause by the use of
customary measures?
________________________________
From:[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
John M. Steele
Sent: 04 April 2009 15:36
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:44329] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
Pat,
You understandably write from a Commonwealth or Australian perspective (I don't
mean spelling), and as a metric consultant, you may have a vested interest in
making old measurements sound more confusing than they are. I am confused by
spoons and cups in recipes from Commonwealth nations.
However, if you receive a recipe from the US , there is no confusion; the terms
are well-defined and have been for some time. I regularly use a recipe from my
greatgrandmother which dates to around 1890. Common cups and spoons may be of
any size, but measuring cups and spoons are well defined. They are as
important to us as your scales (most are marked in metric as well).
Each term is followed by a definition in Customary units, an overly exact
metric conversion, and a practically rounded metric conversion:
cup: 8 US fl oz, 236.5882 mL, 240 mL
ounce: 1 US fl oz, 29.573 53 mL, 30 mL
Tablespoon: 0.5 US fl oz, 14.786 76 mL, 15 mL
teaspoon: 0.1666... US fl oz, 4.928 922 mL, 5 mL
Dry and wet measuring cups are of different designs, but the same capacity.
Dry cups are brim fill, stricken level with the back edge of a knife. Wet cups
are fill-to-mark.
American cooking is entirely volumetric, and it is probably easier to convert
to metric volume than determine the density of everything. The cup and
tablespoon are noticably different than Australian, but no confusion as the
terms are well defined and standardized by NIST (handbook 44 Appendix, C,
SP811, etc)
Now, if only we could get Americans to convert the above volumes to metric.
--- On Sat, 4/4/09, Pat Naughtin < [email protected] > wrote:
From: Pat Naughtin < [email protected] >
Subject: [USMA:44327] Re: Even with "dual," you can't please everybody
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Saturday, April 4, 2009, 9:34 AM
Dear John,
I have posted a response to this that you can find at the same address
at http://www.t-g.com/blogs/bettybrown/entry/26458/
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305Belmont3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric
system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each
year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides
services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for
commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and
in the USA . Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA,
NIST, and the metric associations of Canada , the UK , and the USA .
See http://www.metricationmatters.com/ to subscribe.
