• bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    A similar chart could be made for the US, proving that it does use metric: soda and wine bottles, medicine doses, eye-glasses measurements (in fact most medical things).

    I think that both systems are used in schools now.

    But then I see cooking instructions for a “cup of chicken strips” and a recipe having 1/4 cup of butter, and I wonder why anyone thought that volume was a good idea there.

      • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        True, but that’s just replacing a cup with a length, and rules out using an existing tub.

        Why not use weight, which is easy to measure and tolerant of different forms/shapes?

        • EtherWhack@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          Butter in a tub usually isn’t pure butter as they add oil to it to make it spreadable when cold.

          Recipes that call for butter are normally designed for true/pure butter and may not cook or bake properly if spreadable stuff is used. (there is however Amish rolled butter that’s sold in big ‘loaves’ where measuring can be annoying)

          • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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            13 days ago

            This sounds like a catch-22 problem.

            Maybe scales could be improvised, with a stick, some cups, and awkward-shaped chunks of chicken in one of the cups.

            • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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              13 days ago

              Or, we just use volumetric measurements, despite the slight variations they introduce when you cram pack flour into a cup instead of gently scooping the sifted. It’s a kitchen, not a laboratory or a factory.

              • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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                13 days ago

                My first example was “a cup of frozen chicken strips”.

                I know I can make a guess how much they mean, but I could easily be off by a factor of 2.

                It really wouldn’t be hard to have the weight listed.