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Comment by AwkwardPanda | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see if that conversion can be done in a generic way.

As a metric user, imperial format recipes are the bane of my existence. I swear to god some Americans don't realise the rest of the world uses a whole other system.

Imperial system just seems so illogical and unscientific.

I put "UK" in most English recipe searches where it might matter.

The recipe itself is likely to be a bit less sweet, and my ingredients (purchased in Denmark) are also closer to those sold in Britain than the American versions. Things like types of cream, lack of sugar added to slightly-processed ingredients etc.

I've acquired three types of table spoon in my kitchen drawer. The largest is nearly double the smallest. It's absurd that this is an actual unit of measure.

Assuming we're talking about measuring spoons (since table cutlery can be any volume, according to the design), I first wrote "a metric tablespoon measure is 15mL exactly, by definition." The US one is almost the same, and Australia is weird with 20mL.

But now I see Germany changed the definition at some point, and a 15mL spoon is an Alter Esslöffel, with a Moderner Esslöffel being 7.5mL. Can a German confirm this, or clarify which is used in practise?

The other European countries I've checked use 15mL (if they use the measure at all).

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essbesteck#Verwendung_als_Ma.C...

We don't care for how much volume fits onto a spoon, we use it because it's normal cutlery. We have bigger spoons for eating soup (Esslöffel) and tea spoons (for desert or something like that). It's not really for measurement but it's used because everyone has it. I think a tea spoon would most probably have something around 2-3ml and not 7.5. Don't trust everything that's on wikipedia. Here they have different measurements for example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCchenma%C3%9Fe

So basically TL and EL are not for measurement but used anyway. Things get funny with a "gestrichener" (flat filled spoon) and "gehäufter" (as much as you can fit onto a spoon imho) Löffel.

Yeah, and what's up with all this non-English content on the internet? Don't they know that it's the most spoken language? A lot of it isn't even in Chinese, either! Ruins my day when I come across something written in German

I was taught to bake (and write recipes) using a mixture of units; to prefer metric measurements when precision is required, but to prefer "American" units when it isn't, almost to highlight the absence of precision, and to clue the reader that they may have to adjust for humidity or the amount of gluten generated (or whatever).

I know this stuff is obvious to an experienced cook, but I can also imagine seeing 14,2g of anything causing some unnecessary distress when trying to work with an unfamiliar recipe.

Maybe something like "1c of flour (approx. 120g)" is a good way to be safe?

If you're looking for an engine for actually doing the conversions, there's GNU units[1] and Frink[2] which both contain databases of these conversions you may be able to mine.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/units/

[2]: https://frinklang.org/

I have friends who sometimes help me cook a dinner for more friends. I've seen some of them try to measure out 22.5mL¹ of olive oil for frying because I pressed a button on the site to 1.5× the recipe...

Recipe websites don't include that first 10 pages of a "beginner" recipe book, which usually describes how to measure ingredients and the various cooking techniques used.

¹ 1.5 metric tablespoons, 1.5 × 15mL.

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