Metric/imperial

[AngelLestat]

6 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Try baking without a scale, using volume measurements only for your ingredients.

try the same with imperial...  no all cups are the same.. 
I know perfectly how much is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm = liter.   
1 gram of water = 1 milliliter of water = 1 cm3  (I know how much is 1 cm3). 

[sevenperforce]

 

2 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

try the same with imperial...  no all cups are the same.. 
I know perfectly how much is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm = liter.   
1 gram of water = 1 milliliter of water = 1 cm3  (I know how much is 1 cm3). 

I don't typically measure sugar in cubic inches. And one ounce of water by weight is also one ounce of water by volume.

If I'm baking something, I'm more likely to be measuring things by volume anywhere between 3 mL and 1 L.

Suppose you're making a recipe that serves 6 but you need to serve 9 instead, and the ingredients are all given in volumes between 5 mL and 1 L. Try doing that without a calculator.

 

[AngelLestat]

10 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I don't typically measure sugar in cubic inches. And one ounce of water by weight is also one ounce of water by volume.

If I'm baking something, I'm more likely to be measuring things by volume anywhere between 3 mL and 1 L.

Suppose you're making a recipe that serves 6 but you need to serve 9 instead, and the ingredients are all given in volumes between 5 mL and 1 L. Try doing that without a calculator.

All those things looks weird to you because you never use them..
In fact that problem seems harder with ounce and cups than with  ml or liters..  That is a piece of cake.

[WestAir]

Tex, 

Your first comparison to use milimeters was wrong because the vvaluue was too small. To use kilometers is the same error except in the opposite direction. If I'm driving a boat and I want accurate clearance from a passing ship the most precise but manageable unit I'll use is feet or meters. Not 0.222 km or 2 million milimeters or whatever.

Instead of being sensible and responsing like a decent person you went for the throat and the sad part is I wasn't even being serious with you.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, WestAir said:

Funny you say "that won't fly" because in the aviation industry, some countries use meters (Hint: not milimeters) for altitude while the rest of the world uses feet. It's safe to say that we get more precise altitude separation then them.

Do you have a retort for the extra precision using Fahrenheit temperature?

Disclaimer: This is tongue in cheek. I whole-hardheartedly expect your response to make us both laugh.

What countries?

The international standard for flying altitude is "Flight Levels", where FL400 is 40000 feet, FL340 is 34000 feet, etc. But "feet" is not actual feet above anything, it is essentially an isobar which relates to the air pressure on a standard day in a standard atmosphere at a given number of feet above a standard sea level (none of which actually exist in real life, but it works).

Edited February 17, 2016 by mikegarrison

[WestAir]

China Russia and I think South Korea

[PB666]

29 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

What countries?

The international standard for flying altitude is "Flight Levels", where FL400 is 40000 feet, FL340 is 34000 feet, etc. But "feet" is not actual feet above anything, it is essentially an isobar which relates to the air pressure on a standard day in a standard atmosphere at a given number of feet above a standard sea level (none of which actually exist in real life, but it works).

That is only true above FL180, below FL180 its feet, for this reason you need to check with your local ground station to get barometric pressure, otherwise you may fly into another aircraft. Or to state otherwise if you were flying along at FL305 you could fly into mount Everest which is around 30000 feet, but if you were traveling at FL145 and you have the local station update for pressure, you should not accidentally hit a mountain that is 14,115.2 feet in elevation. And if you had mistakenly placed your autopilot at 14100 instead of 15100 when they find your smashed hull it should be 14050 to 14150

 

Edited February 17, 2016 by PB666

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Try baking without a scale, using volume measurements only for your ingredients.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of home cooks in the US do this every single day.   It's not really a problem.

[Tex_NL]

30 minutes ago, WestAir said:

Tex, 

Your first comparison to use milimeters was wrong because the vvaluue was too small. To use kilometers is the same error except in the opposite direction. If I'm driving a boat and I want accurate clearance from a passing ship the most precise but manageable unit I'll use is feet or meters. Not 0.222 km or 2 million milimeters or whatever.

Instead of being sensible and responsing like a decent person you went for the throat and the sad part is I wasn't even being serious with you.

You still fail to see what does and does not matter in this discussion. A distance is a distance no matter what system you use to measure it. Both can be as accurate or as inaccurate as you want. Whatever you use is completely irrelevant.

Why do I even bother responding?

[mikegarrison]

22 minutes ago, PB666 said:

That is only true above FL180, below FL180 its feet, for this reason you need to check with your local ground station to get barometric pressure, otherwise you may fly into another aircraft. Or to state otherwise if you were flying along at FL30500 you could fly into mount Everest which is around 30000 feet, but if you were traveling at FL145 and you have the local station update for pressure, you should not accidentally hit a mountain that is 14,115.2 feet in elevation. And if you had mistakenly placed your autopilot at 14100 instead of 15100 when they find your smashed hull it should be 14050 to 14150

 

There is no "FL30500". That would be somewhere in LEO (if pressure meant anything there, which it doesn't). But yeah, once you go below the local transition altitude you stop flying standard pressure altitudes and fly local altitudes (either pressure or radar or, increasingly, GPS). (And the transition altitude is not always FL180.)

Edited February 17, 2016 by mikegarrison

[sevenperforce]

47 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

I don't typically measure sugar in cubic inches. And one ounce of water by weight is also one ounce of water by volume.

If I'm baking something, I'm more likely to be measuring things by volume anywhere between 3 mL and 1 L.

Suppose you're making a recipe that serves 6 but you need to serve 9 instead, and the ingredients are all given in volumes between 5 mL and 1 L. Try doing that without a calculator.

All those things looks weird to you because you never use them..
In fact that problem seems harder with ounce and cups than with  ml or liters..  That is a piece of cake.

Never use them? I use metric almost exclusively. There are a few exceptions, though, and baking is one of them.

Consider the following (real) recipe:

• 2 cups (473 mL) all-purpose flour
• 1 ¹/₃ cups (315 mL) white sugar
• ²/₃ cup (159 mL) brown sugar
• ³/₄ cup (177 mL) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 ¹/₂ teaspoons (7 mL) baking soda
• 1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt
• 1 teaspoon (5 mL) espresso powder
• 1 cup (237 mL) milk
• ¹/₂ cup (118 mL) vegetable oil
• ¹/₂ cup (118 mL) mayonnaise
• 2 teaspoons (10 mL) vanilla extract
• 1 cup (237 mL) boiling water
• Serves 12

You only have measuring cups and measuring spoons; no graduated cylinders. No calculator, either. You need to adjust the amounts so that the cake serves 8 instead of serving 12. Assume that you know all Imperial and metric volume ratios by heart.

Will it be easier to work in Imperial or in metric?

Metric is easier to teach and easier to memorize, but it's not necessarily easier to use. If you have both of them memorized, Imperial is often much easier to work with.

13 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of home cooks in the US do this every single day.   It's not really a problem.

Millions of home cooks in the US convert alter volumes in recipes using metric volume measurements without calculators every single day? I doubt it.

[AngelLestat]

haha that makes me laugh.

Why the recipe does not look like this?

• 500 ml (2,236 cups) all-purpose flour
• 300 ml (5/4 cups)  white sugar
• 10 ml (1 teaspoons + 3/4 sugar spoon)  baking soda
• 5 ml (half teaspoon) salt
• You get the point...

Also how much is a cup?

And a spoon?

Also.. how much is 1/2 cup or spoon?  If they dont have regular shape..  From what I can see, 4 cups can be 600ml for someone and 1200 ml for someone else.
Maybe that is the reason why we have so good food in my country.

100ml is 100ml here or in the china.

Edited February 17, 2016 by AngelLestat

[HebaruSan]

10 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

Also how much is a cup?
 

And a spoon?

Also.. how much is 1/2 cup or spoon?  If they dont have regular shape..  From what I can see, 4 cups can be 600ml for someone and 1200 ml for someone else.
 

Those are just the names of the units. You measure with specially sized and labelled tools, not random junk you find around the house:

[YNM]

For cooking, have to admit that spoon or teaspoon is quite common. Cup isn't as much AFAIK. Recipes need not be precise - add or subtract at your will. Spices and eggs are measured in pieces (no point using any form of weight or volume, most of the time they're very lightweight - neat point for metric where twelve eggs roughly translates to a kilogram), meat and flour in grams (or kilograms), liquid (large amount) in litres (never cubic meter, guys) while smaller amount of bulk / liquid goods in spoon / teaspoon. Also for the fact that the spoon will be useful for you to mix just what you add.

Edited February 17, 2016 by YNM

[AngelLestat]

8 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Those are just the names of the units. You measure with specially sized and labelled tools, not random junk you find around the house:

In that case why you can not use this on the metric system?

He said without scales..

[HebaruSan]

6 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

In that case why you can not use this on the metric system?

Certainly you can. I'm not concerned with the earlier arguments; I'm just pointing out that it's not correct to say that there is ambiguity in the imperial unit system simply because you can refer to many different things as "cups" and "spoons".

Quote

He said without scales..

Let's go to the source.

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Try baking without a scale, using volume measurements only for your ingredients.

"... using volume measurements only for your ingredients." The tools I showed are for volume measurements. I take it that @sevenperforce thinks that using metric effectively somehow depends more on mass units, but I'm as confused as you are as to why that might be.

Edited February 17, 2016 by HebaruSan

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Certainly you can. I'm not concerned with the earlier arguments; I'm just pointing out that it's not correct to say that there is ambiguity in the imperial unit system simply because you can refer to many different things as "cups" and "spoons".

Let's go to the source.

"... using volume measurements only for your ingredients." The tools I showed are for volume measurements. I take it that @sevenperforce thinks that using metric effectively somehow depends more on mass units, but I'm as confused as you are as to why that might be.

In baking recipes written with metric units (especially French recipes, for whatever reason), amounts for dry ingredients like flour, sugar, etc. are usually given by weight rather than by volume. So you end up needing to keep a scale on hand to weigh out your ingredients. Recipe measurements in imperial units for dry ingredients are more commonly given in volume units, which are more convenient even tho they can be slightly less precise, because you're just scooping and leveling rather than gradually spooning something into a tared cup on a scale. Presumably this is because volume units are more naturally/easily combined and divided mentally in the Imperial system, once you know it. 

He thinks I don't like the metric system because I supposedly don't know how to use it. In reality, he just doesn't know how to use the Imperial system, and assumes the added complication must be pointless/useless. In reality, the additional complication makes unit conversion a lot easier and avoids long, drawn-out division. 

The Imperial system has more units on ordinary human scales, which makes it harder to memorize, but more descriptive.

[PB666]

34 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Those are just the names of the units. You measure with specially sized and labelled tools, not random junk you find around the house:

I just use a teaspoon for measuring (literally a beverage spoon and a soup spoon for a table spoon) for most southern cooking its a heaping of everything (heaping teaspoon of sugar, heaping table spoon of salt. One cajun chef literally used the palm of his hand as a measuring device, which I suspect is more common than seen on TV. A gallon is what my bottled water is, so if I split that 4 ways I have a quart which if you split 4 ways is a cup.

 

Cooking is not physics its what the teacher thinks works well, If I was going to describe what part dithioethane and 30% hydrogen peroxides when mixed creates the most work (as in don't try this at home), you need to use the metric system.

Edited February 17, 2016 by PB666

[YNM]

Oh really, you need separate spoon just to measure and mix them ? Most of us here don't... and then some people can tell they've thrown in half teaspoon or something.

Edited February 17, 2016 by YNM

[PB666]

5 minutes ago, YNM said:

Oh really, you need separate spoon just to measure and mix them ? Most of us here don't...

my #1 rule of cooking, never use the same spoon twice unless its measuring the same thing and you don't stir. Taking a spoon that has been used to measure one item and/or then stirring the pot with it is the best way of contaminating the second item (lowers shelf life, contributes to spoilage). Take it from someone with food sensitivities, its a no-no, think migraine city, food poisioning, etc. I use a teaspoon for measuring sugar because it has a long handle, which means I don't get sugar grains on my hand, I use a table spoon for measuring grains such as for breakfast (but now I simply pour at a certain rate for a certain amount of time).

[Ten Key]

Just my two cents here, but while metric units are great for precision measurements, I think there are instances where they can be awkward for quick, "good enough" information. 

• A year or so ago we had a pet related emergency and ended up in the animal ER with an obviously distressed cat (he face planted into our couch and broke his jaw, but we didn't know that at the time). Our cat weighs somewhere between 10 and 11 lbs. The vet that was checking us in was bound and determined to use kilograms, but she kept having to stop and check her notes because in kilograms, that extra fraction made a significant difference. 
   
• There are only 25 degrees between room temperature and the freezing point of water on the Celsius scale. There's an awful lot of running room between room temperature and the freezing point of water-- for "day-to-day" temperatures, you can get away with using integers only on the Fahrenheit scale. Using Celsius, you really need those fractions. 

 

I've been known to dabble in fiction writing. Both settings I've been spending time in lately are technical, and both are firmly metric. And the vast majority of the time, that's a good thing. But I sometimes find myself running into trouble when trying to quickly describe something that's about "yay big". Centimeters feel too small-- you need an awful lot of them to get anywhere. And meters feel too large. Giving an approximate length using fractions or decimal points just feels weird. Centimeters and inches are roughly comparable, and so are meters and yards, but there doesn't seem to be a metric equivalent for feet in common usage. Even the decimeter feels too small, and I don't think that unit comes up in everyday conversation. 

I guess that kind of dovetails into the above discussion about aircraft altitude. "About one meter" leaves you just enough room to get killed. 

[mikegarrison]

1 minute ago, Ten Key said:

Just my two cents here, but while metric units are great for precision measurements, I think there are instances where they can be awkward for quick, "good enough" information. 

• A year or so ago we had a pet related emergency and ended up in the animal ER with an obviously distressed cat (he face planted into our couch and broke his jaw, but we didn't know that at the time). Our cat weighs somewhere between 10 and 11 lbs. The vet that was checking us in was bound and determined to use kilograms, but she kept having to stop and check her notes because in kilograms, that extra fraction made a significant difference. 
   
• There are only 25 degrees between room temperature and the freezing point of water on the Celsius scale. There's an awful lot of running room between room temperature and the freezing point of water-- for "day-to-day" temperatures, you can get away with using integers only on the Fahrenheit scale. Using Celsius, you really need those fractions. 

 

I've been known to dabble in fiction writing. Both settings I've been spending time in lately are technical, and both are firmly metric. And the vast majority of the time, that's a good thing. But I sometimes find myself running into trouble when trying to quickly describe something that's about "yay big". Centimeters feel too small-- you need an awful lot of them to get anywhere. And meters feel too large. Giving an approximate length using fractions or decimal points just feels weird. Centimeters and inches are roughly comparable, and so are meters and yards, but there doesn't seem to be a metric equivalent for feet in common usage. Even the decimeter feels too small, and I don't think that unit comes up in everyday conversation. 

I guess that kind of dovetails into the above discussion about aircraft altitude. "About one meter" leaves you just enough room to get killed. 

You could use decimeters.

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Never use them? I use metric almost exclusively. There are a few exceptions, though, and baking is one of them.

Consider the following (real) recipe:

(...)

Millions of home cooks in the US convert alter volumes in recipes using metric volume measurements without calculators every single day? I doubt it.

It's funny that you mentioned this. My sister is into Baking (with a capital B) so I brought her over some American measuring cups (small & large) last time I visited. I also mentioned that the American way of things, by measuring in volumes, seemed more practical to me than the European way of using a scale. Boy, was I wrong...

She promptly sent me a link to a site for Bakers (capital B again) where an American Bakeress (Bakress? Bakerette?) went into an entire tirade against volume measurements and why weight units were so much more accurate. Depending on how you measure it, "one cup of flour" has a tremendous variance in it. On the other hand, 150g of flour is 150g of flour. But not only that, converting portions to bake something bigger or smaller is much easier with weights (masses, really, of course) than with volumes. In the kitchen, and need only half of 3 3/4 cup? Good luck with that. Dividing 375g of flour in half is a lot easier (you don't need a calculator to figure out it's 187g).

In the end it's a matter of perspective. If you're used to using cups, using a scale will seem cumbersome. If you're used to a scale, the cups seem clumsy. The superior method is not one or the other; it's the one you are used to.

[Temstar]

5 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

There are only 25 degrees between room temperature and the freezing point of water on the Celsius scale. There's an awful lot of running room between room temperature and the freezing point of water-- for "day-to-day" temperatures, you can get away with using integers only on the Fahrenheit scale. Using Celsius, you really need those fractions. 

I've never needed fractional degrees for room temperature, what purpose would that serve? I have digital temperature scales that can indeed give me temperature to 0.1 degrees C of accuracy, but it doesn't really give me any benefit - climate control doesn't give you control that fine and in any case I can barely tell temperatures to say, within 2 degrees difference just from my skin.

10 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

Giving an approximate length using fractions or decimal points just feels weird

Why is that a problem? You don't say "pi is about 3", so why can't lengths have decimal points? How would you quote things like interest rates if you're not comfortable with decimal points?

[mikegarrison]

12 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

It's funny that you mentioned this. My sister is into Baking (with a capital B) so I brought her over some American measuring cups (small & large) last time I visited. I also mentioned that the American way of things, by measuring in volumes, seemed more practical to me than the European way of using a scale. Boy, was I wrong...

She promptly sent me a link to a site for Bakers (capital B again) where an American Bakeress (Bakress? Bakerette?) went into an entire tirade against volume measurements and why weight units were so much more accurate. Depending on how you measure it, "one cup of flour" has a tremendous variance in it. On the other hand, 150g of flour is 150g of flour. But not only that, converting portions to bake something bigger or smaller is much easier with weights (masses, really, of course) than with volumes. In the kitchen, and need only half of 3 3/4 cup? Good luck with that. Dividing 375g of flour in half is a lot easier (you don't need a calculator to figure out it's 187g).

In the end it's a matter of perspective. If you're used to using cups, using a scale will seem cumbersome. If you're used to a scale, the cups seem clumsy. The superior method is not one or the other; it's the one you are used to.

Pro cooks (especially bakers) measure by mass, both in the USA and elsewhere. It's amateurs (like me) who measure by volume.