Why do Americans measure everything in cups?
Why do Americans measure everything in cups?
Used a couple of US recipes recently and most of the ingredients are in cups, or spoons, not by weight. This is a nightmare to convert. Do Americans not own scales or something? What's the reason for measuring everything by volume?
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Cups is a volumetric measurement. Honestly I'd be fine with switching to liters for measurements, or deciliters or whatever makes sense. Gravimetric measurements never made intuitive sense to me.
Perhaps that's because it's what you know best and are used to. Volumetric measurements of anything that doesn't have a fixed density make no sense to me. What the hell is one cup of broccoli? Even a cup of flour can have wildly different ammounts of flour. My least favorite though is butter, how the hell am I supposed to measure out 3 tablespoons of butter? Melt it all on the stove and pour out what I need? I find it incredibly unintuitive.
In the US, sticks of butter have tablespoon measurements printed on the label, like this: https://www.errenskitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/butter-sticks.jpg
Most people leave the sticks of butter in the fridge with the wrappers on. If you want X tablespoons of butter, you cut through the wrapper and butter at the right mark.
I'm not saying it's an ideal system (I also prefer recipes that use weights) but it works.
And the volume of butter changes a lot when melted. If thé recipe dont precise the form, you'll need multiple try juste to know if you recipe actually works.
