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Comment by zandor | Hacker News Reader

This reminds of the many recipes that convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius (and vice versa for that matter) and don't round off the numbers properly.

I'm not setting my oven to 176 degrees Celsius even if I could.

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This non-rounded numbers make people think that there's something terribly important at being X degrees and not X+1, not realizing that the internal temps vary widely even when set specific.

I feel recipes have caused more people to avoid cooking than anything invented in the last 1000 years, heh.

With regard to recipes, I sometimes wonder if "round numbers" are causing us to miss out on more optimal recipes. Maybe that dish really would turn out better cooked at 176F, or with 1 and 7/16 cups of flour instead of 1.5.

When it comes to flour, I don't understand why the USA insists on measuring it by volume when the rest of the world does it by mass. The density of flour can vary widely depending on if it's packed at all, and scooping it often leads to voids in the bottom of the measuring cup that you likely won't see unless you're using a clear measuring cup.

When using flour or baking mixes, I convert to grams (1 cup all-purpose flour = 125 grams) and do it by mass to ensure it's the proper amount.

Every American kitchen has measuring cups, few have scales. And people learn that method and continue to use it (most people don't even know about zeroing a scale after you add each ingredient).

It may also be that US measuring cups are "more convenient" sizes than the equivalent metric ones would be.

For flour, they often specify "sifted" which removes some of the variability.

> Every American kitchen has measuring cups, few have scales.

There's no reason Americans can't buy scales.

I got mine for $15 at Costco 10+ years ago. You can still get them from Amazon or Walmart for less than that.

> It may also be that US measuring cups are "more convenient" sizes than the equivalent metric ones would be.

When measuring out flour, I don't use a measuring cup at all. I put a bowl on my scale, hit the Tare button to zero it out, then add whatever number of grams of flour I need to the bowl.

> For flour, they often specify "sifted" which removes some of the variability.

That's gotta be awkward to sift into a measuring cup.

The reason is momentum. Switching to measuring flour by weight will require households to have both measuring cups and scales, require recipes to be rewritten, require cooks with an intuition based on volume to relearn the intuition based on weight. None of this is insurmountable, just like none of the reasons for switching from imperial to metric are insurmountable, but for people getting things done, it's not enough of an issue to worth making the switch, so this kind of switch would require an institution or coalition with enough clout to make the switch and pull everyone else along. For cooking, I don't believe such an institution or coalition exists.

The problem is recipe book authors want to sell to all Americans (especially that group that always buys recipe books but never actually uses them) and so they aim at the widest possible market.

And as a result, most Americans never get scales since their recipes don't call for them.

Brings to mind a convo about coffee a few years back. A friend was quite surprised I owned a scale accurate to the tenth of a gram just for dosing coffee beans when I could just use a super accurate scoop instead. I left it at that, and didn’t go into how I account for humidity affecting grinder retention, etc.

This is interesting! And makes total sense. I didn't know that the rest of the world (smartly) measures flour in terms of mass not volume. And your conversion factor is really helpful, thank you.

You find temperatures that precise when they're for equipment that can hit it: a sous vide steak at 56º C is different from a sous vide steak at 58º C. It just makes no sense for an oven, which is a pretty blunt instrument.

I think you're only going to see that benefit if, as mentioned you have a super precise oven, or you're getting super precise ingredient quality every time.

Otherwise there's too many variables fluctuating every time to really attribute much to those tiny variations in the recipe.

It’s easier to use weight instead of volume if you want measurements more precise than a 1/4 cup.

Most home ovens struggle to hit the set point to within 25F for most of their internal volume. They also have large swings in temperature as cheap heating elements do not respond quickly.

neither your oven's thermostat or your measuring cups are precise enough for either of those examples to make any difference.

recipes routinely call for "1 large egg". think about the amount of variance that can be present in that measurement, and assume every other measurement can vary by the same amount.

They somewhat do - this is the "skill" in being a chef, knowing what ingredients to add/reduce to get the result you want.

Why the quotes around skill?

Grocer's quotes for emphasis.

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