Dear John and All,
It seems to me that it is a common trap for people new to metrication
to get immediately involved in metric conversion where the first part
of the process is to become amazed at the complexity of all of the old
pre-metric measures and to try and describe them all, together with
their faults.
To my mind, this is a step in the wrong direction that makes some, but
very little, progress toward metrication. But it is fascinating; and
you can spend countless hours and days going down this path. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/metric_conversion.html
for some thoughts on this pathway.
For cooking, my wife and I have considered this issue carefully as we
compiled several different cook books for local charities. Our
approach was the direct metrication approach where we tool a role as
metrication leaders.
To do this we collected all of the special recipes from many wonderful
old cooks from many parts of the world, converted their recipes to
simple metric units using generally whole numbers, then test-cooked
the lot of them — Yummm! See http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricCookingWithConfidence.pdf
Notice that our readers, the grand children and great grandchildren of
our recipe suppliers will never have to see the names of the old pre-
metric measuring words in our cook books except for teaspoons,
tablespoons, and cup, which we define wherever they are used. Our
readers will never have to do any conversions from all of the old
measuring methods to modern metric units; they can start to cook
straight away using metric units only.
Discussions about the different sizes of cups and spoons are possibly
best left to academic historians while the rest of us just get on with
our lives.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
On 2009/04/17, at 12:54 AM, John M. Steele wrote:
OK, he is frustrated, I get that. However, he goes out of his way
to be confused by American volumetric measure issues which can be
cleaned up by better research.
A few points, commenting ONLY on American measure.
*Measuring cups and spoons have well defined volumes, "common" cups
and spoons (real expresso, tea and coffee cups, real flatware)
don't. Use measuring cups and spoons to measure.
*1 US gallon = 128 fl oz = 3.785 411 784 L, exactly.
NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C defines the cup as 8 fl oz, the
Tablespoon as 0.5 fl oz, and the teaspoon as 1/3 Tablespoon. These
values are (rounded slightly) 236.5882 mL, 14.786 76 mL, 4.928 922
mL (from NIST SP811).
*Rounded values of 240 mL, 15 mL, 5 mL are specified by law ONLY for
serving sizes in the nutrition label (specified by FDA), and are NOT
accurate enough for net contents labels (specified by FTC). They are
probably "good enough" in the kitchen, but it should be understood
they are rounded. Measuring Tablespoons are commonly marked 1
Tbsp / 15 mL; it is not clear whether they are really 15 mL or
nearer 14.79 mL, but it probably doesn't matter in cooking.
He is welcome to remain as confused as he wishes to be, but his
questions have answers.
It does seem that elsewhere, volumetric cooking measure is not as
well defined, probably because they don't use it anymore.
--- On Thu, 4/16/09, Michael Payne <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Michael Payne <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:44698] Cooking using Cups
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Thursday, April 16, 2009, 9:35 AM
http://www.lemis.com/grog/recipes/measures.php
Interesting take on the various size of cups around the world as
well as some units from Colonial Malaysia.
Mike Payne
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
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
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
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