It's more of a pain than cups (which have numerous standards but they're basically close enough not to matter - especially if you assume it's one of the US sizes) when '1 stick butter' pops up in a recipe.
If I'm converting from sticks to grams, I use the above information as a guide or simply weigh it. The information to covert it is easily found online, I've done it many times - mostly, I've not lived in the US for many years yet I still want to make familiar foods.
No I'm not, it's just completely unknown here (and I believe in most of the world). Don't make me look up '1 stick butter size' when I'm trying to follow your recipe..
The reason I say it's more annoying than cups (which are arguably worse because I said there's multiple, but in practice they're so close it's not likely to matter) is I suppose just that it's enough less common that I don't have 250ml in the back of my mind when I read it.
When I first came across it it was even worse, I assumed it was like 'a knob' (knife off a little 'stick' of butter from the block), which is obviously much less than it is, and didn't think to look it up as something standard but unfamiilar to me.
...is it a standardized measure?
(Out of curiosity, is it a regulated measure? Would I be prosecuted for selling a stick of butter that doesn't weigh 1/4 of a pound?)
In my country we wouldn't describe a solid in cups, just grams.
Because you ran into it in the first place. You think cookbooks are giving out subjective instructions?
"You said stick, but I don't know what that means" is a pretty reasonable conclusion to draw when you encounter the usage. "You said stick; you must not believe that words have meanings" is something else again.
An obvious analogy for the lack of precision of "stick of butter" outside of US culture is my culture's "block of butter" - typically, a block of butter in my country is 500g. But not always.
So how do you know how much butter I intended you to use if I say "add half a block of butter" in my biscuit recipe?
How big is a block of butter where you live? Do they even sell it by the block? Or is it just sticks? Rough mental calculation, there's about 4 and nearly a half sticks to the block.
I guess there's a reason humans developed and use units of measurement.
Anecdote time! When I was young I tried to follow a recipe off the Internet that specified a stick of butter. So I diligently cut a long skinny bit of butter from my block of butter, a little confused as to what difference the shape made. The biscuits were rather awful.
There are some exceptions like Amish butter that come in a 2 pound roll (round block). Kerrygold and Finlandia butter from Europe adapt to the 8oz and 16oz standards just like a US company would adapt to UK or likely EU standards.
This is probably one of my country's fanciest butter makers: https://lewisroadcreamery.co.nz/collections/butter
Cue the funny anecdote. We've been using au pairs to help with the kids. It took about 6 months for one of us to notice that when a recipe called for "1 cup" of something, one au pair would go into the cabinet and grab a random glass and use that to measure. Our glasses range from 4 oz. to 18oz, so there were tons of size disparities. We didn't notice for so long because she was usually making rice, and the ratio was the most important part, and the ratios was cups to cups.
To be clear, that disparity had just never occurred to us, and in no way did we blame her. All of us (including her) had a good laugh over it and we showed her where the measuring cups were kept.
I'm American. I lived in the US until around 8.5 years ago and I moved to Norway. I've had to look up conversions many times so that I could cook comfort food.
Other folks have answered the regulated measure stuff, but FWIW: Every butter maker sold sticks where I was from (Indiana) and all the sticks were the same size. Margarine brands did the same so long as they weren't sold in tubs.
Greetings from Berlin.
Realistically, I wind up with 3 sets of measures: I have a scale, American cups, and a large 'norwegian' measuring cup.
Joking aside I suspect if you are good enough where the limiting factor in your baking is the precision of butter specified as opposed to sloppy techniques you are better off using a recipe written by a professional pastry chef for other proficient bakers. In my experience they usually write quantities in terms of weight and recommend measuring it that way.
For example Claire Saffitz calls in her Confetti Cake recipe for "3 sticks unsalted butter (12 oz / 340g), at room temperature". That would indicate that the 100g approximation is 13% low.
1 stick of butter is 4oz by weight which is defined to be 0.5 cups (i.e when you write down 1 cup butter it means 8 oz).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#:~:text=United%20States....
Europeans: "how much is a cup?? Why can't I just use grams like I do with everything else?"
Americans: "? It's a cup, just use a measuring cup?"
E: "I tried that and my recipe came out wrong!"
Me: "I regret to inform you that US cups, UK Imperial Cups, and metric cups are different sizes..."
(If you're a non-American making US recipes, the easiest improvement you can make is buying a set of US measuring cups, which also cover things like tablespoon. These days they may be available from Alibaba or your local Amazon so you don't actually have to source them from the US)
A traditional US cup ('US customary') is also half a pint - but that's of course a US pint, which makes it about 237ml.
A 'US legal' cup (e.g. for FDA and nutritional labelling purposes) is 240ml. I don't know why that's shifted somewhat to metric when the US is otherwise so resistant!
Most people cooking in Europe routinely get accuracy better than 10ml, because they're using scales rather than volumetric measures in many cases that Americans do. I agree it's unlikely to matter though, unless compounded out to many cups of something. If the water content is high, it's going to matter more (and be harder to control/write in a recipe) how much boils off for example.
And I regret to inform you that that should read 'each of the US cups'! ('US legal' & 'US customary' iirc.)
In practice though, sod it, it's 250ml (or maybe Imperial if that's the measuring glass I'm using anyway.. but it also has ml on) near enough, how long I let it boil's going to affect it more anyway.
They look like the West Coast shape, and is usually available as either 250g or 500g (17.6oz) sticks. Though when checking just now I see Lurpack are the odd ones out offering 400g sticks in a different shape.
We do have tubs, but it's usually a blended variety of some kind.
What it still is, though, is visually hilarious. When I think of "stick", I think of something you hold in your hand, wave around, or throw far away for a dog to fetch.
Now imagine that, but with butter!
For that matter, do you find "breadsticks" hilarious too?
https://www.dreamstime.com/stick-butter-measurement-markings...
Also the wrapper has measurements on it.