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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

I wish it was common practice to do everything by weight! Measuring by volume tends to have a lot of more error due to manufacturing of the measurement device, packing of the material, and density fluctuations

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I grew up in a region where everything in recipes is given by weight and learned to cook this way.

Nonetheless, although initially super annoyed, I have grown some fondness of using cups as measurement. For day to day cooking, I can’t be bothered to do things precisely and I’m more interested in rough ratios. Usually I don’t use any measurement device at all.

Also, no matter which way, often you can not rely on measurements because of how widely the products differ. For example paprika powder. The exact same amount can go from not doing anything discernible for the dish to overpower it.

My favorite way of cooking is how it was done in a half day class I took in Singapore. There were some basic amounts given as a starting point, then all further instructions where: do this until it becomes that consistency or color, taste, if you want it spicier add some more of this, if you want it more sour add this, sweeten with that if you like, taste again, etc.

Exact measurement I think is great for certain dishes where it really matters and for professional places to make it reproducible and scalable, but at home, for me it takes like half the fun out of it and I reckon more people would enjoy cooking if recipes where generally conceived, less as instruction manuals and more as seed for an idea for experimentation.

The increased accuracy often doesn't really translate to a better result though. And many people will taste test while cooking so that mistakes can be fixed.

Exactly! It doesn’t really make sense to make recipes overly precise. It also depends on the tools available, the brand of oil, etc etc. Too many fluctuating variables.

Even better, they're using mass which will allow the same recipes to work on Mars.

You assume that chemistry works the same in different gravitational fields of different strengths!! How plebian!

Also: /S ;)

For main ingredients, sure: when baking bread, I measure flour and water into a bowl sitting on a kitchen scale, and it's great.

But there's no way that I could measure the yeast with my kitchen scale! When a (US) recipe calls for "1/4 tsp yeast", I'd be lucky if that were even one gram, and that's my scale's resolution. Same for salt, and for lots of other seasonings. (I suppose I could get a high-precision lab-grade balance for that sort of thing? Seems a bit more complicated than just using a few measuring spoons.)

That said, I completely agree about the ambiguities involved. If anyone out there happens to know what the heck "1/4 tsp of saffron threads" is supposed to mean, I'm all ears. (Thoroughly crumbled, I'll bet I could fit $20 of saffron into 1/4 tsp. Not crumbled at all, even half a dozen threads arch up above the spoon like some sort of abstract wireframe sculpture.)

I have two scales for cooking, one of them a "drug scale"* with hundredth gram resolution. It was as cheap as my kitchen scale. Still, I only use it for modernist ingredients like emulsifiers, where small variations can cause big outcome changes. For a quarter teaspoon yeast, yeah just use the quarter teaspoon.

Measuring by mass has a lot to recommend it, but converting a volumetric recipe to mass is not worth it. It's not as precise a process as you'd like and will still need ad hoc adjustments.

* All scales are drug scales, if you're bold enough

In Europe, it is common to use alternative measurements, for amounts where you’d need a lab grade or drug dealers scale. A tablespoon, a knife tip, half a sachet, etc.

At the same time it also used to implicitly indicate that how much you use exactly doesn’t really matter as long as it is in the ballpark.

By weight alone probably wouldn't guarantee results. Consider, the same weight of dry firewood would still burn slower that that much paper/kindling.

One could argue those are different ingredients, and to an extent I can agree with that. However, the point is the same ingredient at a different density is practically a different ingredient. So the problem is some ingredients shift during rest into other ingredients.

Which, I don't think, is controversial. Whole milk and cream are obvious facets of this. And most different types of flour are visually indistinct. Then there is kosher salt versus table salt. Pretty sure those are not really substituted just by weight.

I was actually offered a cook book where every measurement is in grams, including oil or spices (so yes, measurements like 0.5g are common in there). It's also typeset in LaTeX.

(Although tbf, I haven't ever actually use it except when looking up pancake batter recipe)

I can't say I'm sure how I would measure an ounce of sugar...

A kitchen scale? You don’t weigh the amount, you add until the scale with your bowl on it registers an increment of that amount.

A tablespoon of sugar--a common amount in a recipe--is 12.5 grams. As the other guy said, a kitchen scale can easily do this: throw your bowl on there, hit the "tare" button to zero the scale, and then any sugar you add will be the reading on the scale. No spoons or cups needed; it's simpler! Tare again and add the next ingredient.

Whoa, okay, you've convinced me! I'm on board with this!

This would drive me crazy. Unless you're baking why do you need such specific amounts of things like sugar? Just taste the dish and add more sugar if you need it.

Using measuring spoons instead of a scale drives me crazy. Even basic recipes benefit from mise en place and wiping/cleaning measuring spoons to do that is maddening. When using a scale the task becomes a simple matter of counting in just the same way as using measuring spoons. Using grams is the real win. Having everything in a base 10 system means less math in your head while managing the rest of the kitchen.

Well, unless you need to divide a recipe down. Base 10 isn't optimal for everything.

If I'm baking bread or a cake or something that really needs exact amounts yes. Strict mise en place and measuring things by the gram for basic recipes seems like major overkill to me, I'd eyeball everything and avoid dirtying the measuring spoons at all. Maybe I'm lazy.

How do you taste an uncooked cookie dough?

That falls under baking IMO.

I have a simple kitchen scale, it has become indispensable.

I measure everything: 100g of pasta if I'm not too hungry, 22g of coffee beans for 300g of water etc

And don't think I'm particularly OCD, it's just so much more convenient to have repeatable results.

100% this. I initially bought the scale so that I could have a scientific and repeatable process for making coffee, but now I use it for everything I eat and make. It's become second nature now.

As a European that's like hearing someone say they have no idea how to measure the width of a box (measuring tape or ruler), an amount of water (measuring cup), or an amount of a solid that won't nicely fit into cups or spoons (e.g. apple). You never came across a recipe that called for 200g sugar and 400g flower, for example?

From someone who watches american vlogs I heard that everything in the USA is cups and spoons. It makes me wonder: doesn't it get old to have to clean the cup and a set of spoons after every use? Why not pour directly into the mixing bowl that you put on a scale?

> doesn't it get old to have to clean the cup and a set of spoons after every use

sort of, but I just measure all the dry ingredients first, then the wet ingredients, and then put the cups/spoons in the dishwasher

> Why not pour directly into the mixing bowl that you put on a scale?

Recipes here very rarely give weights.

> You never came across a recipe that called for 200g sugar and 400g flower, for example?

Not in any American recipe book or web site. It's always by volume. This makes baking extra difficult.

It’s a joke. An ounce is both a unit of volume and weight...or rather two units of weight. The two units of weight are less of an issue when cooking because gold is rarely eaten at all and certainly not in troy ounce quantities.

Sugar is sold by weight but measured by volume when cooking...and not in volumetric ounces but using cups and fractional cups...a cup being eight volumetric ounces.

The nexus between volumetric ounces and avoirdupois ounces is a pint of water is sixteen volumetric ounces and weighs about one avoirdupois pound and an avoirdupois pound weighs sixteen avoirdupois ounces. A roundabout way of sayin “a pint’s a pound the world around.” Obviously empire induces certain conceits.

An advantage of volumetric measuring is using utensils rather than mechanisms. A measuring cup can hold a cracked egg and a scale can’t...which also points out that the variability of eggs and walnuts suggests that gram accuracy is not warranted for ordinary cooking...you probably don’t adjust the weight of flour based on its moisture content.

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