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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

> 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.

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